Use of a new analytical technique to determine heat input from inner surface temperatures measured on a hemispherical shell during a free flight experiment

A technique for deriving outer surface temperature and heat transfer distributions from inner surface temperature measurements recorded from three arrays of thermocouples was investigated. A hemispherical shell which was mounted on the front of a rocket vehicle reached a maximum Mach number of 5.5 at 4 km altitude after 7 s of flight. It is concluded that the technique is successful but that the circumferential temperature and heat transfer resolutions could be improved by increasing the number of thermocouples in each array from seven to at least nine.