| On February 1, 2003, while re-entering earth's atmosphere, the space shuttle Columbia broke off into pieces killing all the seven astronauts. One of the major causes of this fatal accident was a breach in the Thermal Protection System (TPS) causing very high rise in temperatures inside the space shuttle. This incident motivated a need to redesign current TPS, to avoid such accidents in future. First part of this thesis discusses design evolution and analysis of a proposed new TPS using self activated, multifunction material system. Different aspects such as profile design, thermal structural issues, possibility of various material combinations etc. are taken into consideration. As design phases are coupled into fluid-thermal-structural environment, Ansys Multiphysics 9.0 is used as design and analysis tool. In the second part, we discuss about the real life transient case analysis of a meso scale heat exchanger using functionally Gradient Materials (FGM). This simulation analyzes the possibility of thermal shock and sudden rise in stresses in the system. The final part analyzes various design issues in building a cross flow meso scale heat exchanger using different models of six layered FGM system. |
