Assessment of Arcjet Radiation by Mass Addition

Measurements of the radiative heat flux component contributing to the total stagnation point heat transfer rate in high-enthalpy ground testing facilities are assessed in this paper. The new idea to measure the radiative contribution is the removal of the convective heating by gas injection into the stagnation region. This leaves only radiative heat transfer, which is measured using a classical water calorimeter. Using gas specific absorption the VUV radiation can be separated. The approach compares well to radiometric sensor data for one flow condition. In total, four conditions are investigated and the measured VUV radiative heating amounts to 0.74 % up to 5.8 %of the total incident heat flux.