The present work addresses the development of a method for the calculation of Convective heat-transfer and surface temperatures on heat-shields of Aeroassisted Orbital Transfer Vehicles (AOTVs) in hypersonic flow regimes.

Inviscid flowfield solutions are obtained about the aerobraking shield on the AOTVs using axisymmetric Euler's equations. The flowfield solutions are coupled with laminar and turbulent boundary-layer equations and the heat-shield material properties to obtain convective heating rates and heat-shield wall temperatures.

A method for obtaining non-dimensionalized solution of convective heat-transfer rates is obtained. This non-dimensionalized solution can be used for calculating convective heat-transfer rates and wall temperatures for various freestream conditions encountered during the aerobraking maneuvers.

Calculations are carried out for perfect gas and equilibrium air cases, and the effect of wall catalysis on convective heat-transfer is also incorporated. The results are in good agreement with available experimental and numerical results for AOTVs.