Conservative Analysis of Transient Heat Transfer in Thermal Protection Systems with Interval Parameters

There are many uncertainties in the actual use of thermal protection systems (TPSs). In this paper, an interval finite element model of a TPS under transient heat transfer is established by taking the uncertainties of TPSs as interval parameters. An affine interval finite element method (AIFEM) is proposed to study the temperature response bounds of uncertain TPSs under transient heat transfer conditions. Two numerical examples are given to verify the effectiveness and accuracy of the proposed AIFEM by comparison with the Monte Carlo method. The results show that the AIFEM can provide conservative and efficient calculation results in TPS transient heat transfer design with interval parameters.