Efficient synergistic high-temperature thermal insulation and infrared stealth via coupled dual-mode thermal management

The rapid advancement of hypersonic vehicles has imposed an urgent demand for integrated thermal protection and high-temperature infrared stealth technologies. However, currently available materials for thermal protection and infrared stealth lack the capability to withstand extremely high-temperature environments, which imposes significant limitations on their application in hypersonic vehicles. Based on transformation thermotics theory, this work presents a non-closed thermal cloak with improved region transformation, whose inherent heat flow guidance characteristics enable effective improvement of thermal protection performance and break through the performance limit of thermal insulation materials. Further, a coupled dual-mode thermal management system is developed by integrating the non-closed thermal cloak and a wavelength-selective emitter. The finite element simulation results reveal that the synergistic coupling of the non-closed thermal cloak and the wavelength-selective emitter establishes an efficient heat transport pathway, in which the heat is efficiently routed from the high-temperature head region of the nose cone to the low-temperature surface and dissipated into the environment through non-atmospheric window bands. This mechanism reduces the temperature on the head region and improves the uniformity of the surface infrared radiation intensity. Compared with traditional combined system of thermal insulation materials and wavelength-selective emitters, the present strategy achieves 21% improvement in thermal insulation and 34.6% improvement in infrared stealth performance. This work presents a novel approach that integrates heat flow guidance and spectral radiation regulation, exhibiting broad application potential for high-temperature curved surfaces faced with dual challenges of high-temperature thermal protection and infrared stealth.