Photogrammetric recession measurements of ablative materials in arcjets

This paper describes an optical method for measuring the recession time histories of ablative thermal protection system (TPS) materials as they are tested in an arcjet facility. The method is non-intrusive and requires no external light source or modifications to the test article. It does require, first, a test article that exhibits texture as it ablates, and, second, high-resolution video images of the ablating surface from at least two directions. Software automatically reads the sequences of images and, by successive image cross correlation, tracks the deformation of a surface grid that conforms to the shape of the test article. Standard photogrammetric transformations are used to convert image-plane displacements of the surface grid to object-space displacements. The method yields a time history of the displacement of each node of the grid for the full time that the test article is exposed to the arcjet flow. Measurements have been made during many tests in the 60 MW arcjet at NASA Ames Research Center, including tests of TPS materials for the Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle and Mars Science Laboratory. The photogrammetric recession measurements have been in good agreement with post-test measurements of the change in thickness of the test articles