83th ESA Parabolic Flight Campaign - Non-isoThermal Sloshing PARabolic FliGht Experiment
DAY 1 – 20/11/2023
The preparation week for the 83th ESA Parabolic Flight Campaign starts today! The VKI Team under the supervision of Alessia Simonini (Principal Investigator) is the Experiment n°8 – NT-SPARGE, Non-isoThermal Sloshing PARabolic FliGht Experiment.
The purpose of this experiment is to study the sloshing phenomena of cryogenic fuels in tanks during microgravity phases with a particular focus on its thermodynamic behavior.
Many launchers and spacecrafts (Ariane 6, Space Launch System, Space shuttle…) are propelled with cryogenic fuels such as liquid hydrogen and liquid methane . One of the issues encountered during the design and operation of such missions is the sloshing of the fuels inside their reservoirs. This sloshing phenomenon generates on top of dynamic instabilities a strong thermal mixing between the pressurized gas and the subcooled liquid, creating strong pressure fluctuations and engine thrust instabilities.
The experiment is composed of 2 Racks that will fly in the aircraft A310 Billy Bob operated by Novespace. Rack 1 is a metallic containment that confines the main experimental equipment: one isothermal quartz cell (cold), one non-isothermal quartz cell (hot), pressurant reservoir, cameras, backlighting system, heaters… Rack 2 contains all electronic devices and computers.
The VKI team (Francisco Monteiro, Julien de Decker, Pedro Marques and Louis Carbonnelle) has arrived early in the morning at Novespace premises to unload the van, assemble all equipment inside the racks and undergo conformity checks at the Novespace premises.
DAY 2 - 21/11/2023
The team is working on the set-up in Novespace premises. The electrical and mechanical reviews performed by Novespace have been successfully passed on day 2. The hardware is ready to be loaded in the aircraft.
DAY 3,4,5 - 22/11/2023 - 24/11/2023
The hardware is now on board of the aircraft. The VKI team performs final checks on the hardware and its acquisition system. The different test procedures are simulated in real conditions to ensure optimal operation within the strict timing of the parabolic flights. These flights are confirmed for Tuesday 28/11, Wednesday 29/11 and Thursday 30/11. Jean-Baptiste Gouriet joins the team in the evening.
WEEK_END
Different thermodynamic behaviors are identified in order to cover the unforeseen situations during the flight.
DAY 6 - 27/11/2023
Last day before flying, the VKI team is fully focused on testing the final “in-flight procedures” and conditioning (degassing) the test fluid (HFE7000). At the end of day, each team has been invited to present their experiment in front of the other participants and to share a walking light dinner.
DAY 7 - First flight day (28/11/2023)
Francisco, Pedro and Louis are part of the flyer team today. It is the second time flying for Pedro and Louis, but the first time for Francisco. The flight went well, and the experiment behaved nominally! First parabolas helped them to familiarize with the hypergravity and microgravity conditions, and to evaluate how the set-up is responding. Synchronized images, pressures and temperatures data have been successfully acquired for all parabolas. The cameras showed a nice sloshing behavior inside both the hot and the cold cells. A first analysis of the data indicates predominant thermal impact on the system. Further investigations will require to post-process the terabytes of collected data. Let’s get ready for next flight covering other test conditions.
DAY 8 - Second flight day (29/11/2023)
Francisco, Pedro and Julien are going to run the test bench under microgravity today! It is the first time for Julien. Congratulations!
On the second day, the amount of liquid inside the two sloshing is different from the first day. The liquid phase is reduced by half in order to have a database as complete as possible. As yesterday, the set-up works nominally and the team acquired a lot of images, pressure and temperature data.
In the afternoon, the astronaut Thomas Pesquet who is also one of the pilots of this campaign interviewed Louis. They discussed about the project and the aim of this study. Cherry on the cake, the whole VKI team took a picture with Thomas.
