Three-Dimensional Radiation Ray-Tracing for Hypersonic Entry Vehicles

Shock layer radiation is a form of aerodynamic heating that becomes significant at some entry velocities, depending on the vehicle trajectory and the planet’s atmosphere. Radiation heating is commonly computed with an appropriate method known as the tangent slab approximate in which the radiative heat flux is simplified to be a one-dimensional equation and, thus, the effects of radiation intensities from other directions are neglected.