Design of thermal insulation based on Open-Cell carbon materials for spacecraft

High-temperature open-cell carbon materials with a porosity between 60 and 95% are the object of study. The aim of this work is to find ways to reduce the weight of spacecraft thermal insulation due to the rational choice of porosity level and characteristic pore size of high-temperature carbon materials. This aim is achieved by building geometric models of representative volume elements of open-cell carbon materials based on Voronoi diagrams, modeling radiation-conductive heat transfer in representative volume elements of materials, theoretical calculation of thermophysical properties, and performing thermal design of the solar probe heat shield using materials of the optimized structure. (C) 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.