Convective and Radiative Heat Transfer During Reentry and Advanced Techniques for Their Simulation

Experimental engineering research has been largely devoted to simulation, in the laboratory, of phenomena and systems which are difficult, for one reason or another, to reproduce in full-scale tests. The success of these efforts at simulation in guaranteeing the final system performance has been in direct proportion to the success in choosing the proper parameters to be matched and to the exactness of scaling laws derived for use in projecting to full-scale behavior. In the best of all possible worlds one could always make his tests at the design conditions using the complete system under consideration. One example will suffice to show why this generally cannot be done.