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Heat Resistive Ceramics

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Yoav Oreg

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Jan 26, 1997, 3:00:00 AM1/26/97
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Hello all,
I saw a while ago an article on the space shuttle's heat resistive
tiles.
In the article, a tile was placed in an oven and heated up untill it
(the tile) glowed.
The tile was the taken out of the oven and after a few minutes was
picked up bare-handed by some one.
The inside was still glowing hot but the outer surface has cooled down
to ambient.
Apparently the heat conductance of this material is so low that
radiative cooling of the surface is much stronger than the heat flux
from the inside.
As far as I know, NASA dosn't sell any of it's products retail, could
some one give me any information on how I can get some of the tile
material? any information on other ultra-high thermal resistive
materials will be greatly appreciated
Yoav

Michael

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Jan 27, 1997, 3:00:00 AM1/27/97
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There is a lot of research going on in this area. I believe the German
Aerospace Establishment (DLR) in Cologne, Germany is doing research in
this area.
Maybe they can advise you.

MM

Alan Rosenfield

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Jan 27, 1997, 3:00:00 AM1/27/97
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About 15 years ago we did some strength testing on shuttle tiles. If my
memory is correct they were silica foams, with extremely low density.
There were two grades '9' and '22' and both were extremely weak. The
developer was Lockheed.

I bleieve that research on foams is (was?) being carried out by Michael
Ashby and his students at Cambridge. Some papers were published in
Metallurgical Transactions about ten years ago.

I'm afraid that I have nothing new since we never got funds to follow up
our research.
--
Al Rosenfield
1650 Ridgway Pl., Columbus OH 43212 USA
phone: 614/486-8892; fax: 614/481-8038
e-mail <aro...@freenet.columbus.oh.us>

Al McGrath

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Jan 31, 1997, 3:00:00 AM1/31/97
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Maurice Ward's Starlite polymer will do a similar job without the
hassles of ceramics, but it's not commercially available yet. Maurice
visited us this week and we did the trick with the propane torch (1200
C, way beyond Shuttle tile temperatures). Get Starlite glowing
yellow-hot, take away the torch, and within a few seconds you can touch
the surface. Really works, too. Long-term durability in a given
application would require some developmental testing.

- Steve Richardson

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