Adrien BRAULT, under the supervision of Arnaud BULTEL (CORIA), Samuel JOUEN (GPM) et Pascal BOUBERT (CORIA), will defend his PhD thesis intitled:
“Study of plasma-alloy interaction during an atmospheric entry”
in order to get the grade of Doctor of Université de Rouen-Normandie in Physics-Energetics
on Friday, April 10 at 10:30 am at Amphithéâtre D of UFR des Sciences et Techniques
Abstract
This thesis aims to study the oxidation of metallic alloys constituting space debris during their atmospheric re-entry. Three alloys were studied : TA6V, Inconel 718 and Invar 36. The SOUPLIN setup was used to generate a plasma similar to that formed during an atmospheric re-entry. This plasma has been characterized by Two-photon Absorption Laser-Induced Fluorescence, highlighting atomic oxygen densities significantly higher than those encountered during furnace oxidation. The oxidation results show that the kinetics in plasma is significantly higher than in furnace and that the nature of the phases formed differs according to the oxidation medium. These observations indicate that, although simpler to implement, furnace oxidation does not allow reproducing the conditions of an atmospheric re-entry, unlike plasma. Finally, a model of TA6V oxidation kinetics based on the temporal temperature profiles of the sample was proposed.
Keywords : Atmospheric re-entry, space debris, inductively coupled plasma, two-photon laser-induced fluorescence, plasma-alloy interaction, TA6V, Inconel 718, Invar 36, oxidation kinetics.