NUMERICAL SIMULATIONS AND APPLICATIONS OF HEAT PIPE TECHNOLOGIES IN SPACECRAFT THERMAL CONTROL SYSTEM

摘要

Heat pipe (HP) technologies are widely accepted in spacecraft thermal control systems. In this paper, the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer02 (AMS-02) is sampled to introduce applications and thermal control performances of conventional and new HP technologies. Emphasis is laid on numerical simulations and thermal control performances of HPs and LHPs. The internal two-phase heat transfer process brings HPs and LHPs excellent isothermal properties and simultaneously complicated numerical calculations. Based on experience and experimental researches, heat pipes, especially serving for spacecrafts thermal control without gravity, can be simplified as bodies in which the working fluid is regarded as one single node, no vaporization and condensation heat transfer processes are considered; a constant contact heat transfer coefficient between working fluid and walls is appointed. Such assumption is feasible because of the strong two –phase heat transfer inside HPs and LHPs. Detailed simulations of the CAB thermal control system with varying orbital and internal thermal loads describe excellent thermal control performances of related HP technologies in space applications. Thermal vacuum tests required for each space apparatus are performed to testify the simplified HP simulations. Results show that such assumption can bring acceptable results and less computation time to a real application.