Heat Transfer Modeling in the Wick Structure of an Innovative Evaporator for a Two-Phase Mechanically Pumped Loop

Date

2020-07-31

Journal Title

Journal ISSN

Volume Title

Publisher

2020 International Conference on Environmental Systems

Abstract

With the advancements in space missions, the need for highly efficient thermal control systems that can handle high heat fluxes and accurate temperature control is increasing. To meet these demands, a novel two-phase Mechanically Pumped Fluid Loop (MPFL) for spacecraft thermal control is under development at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). The system incorporates an innovative additively manufactured planar evaporator that uses a porous wick to separate the liquid and vapor phases. Here, a two-dimensional model of the heat transfer in the porous structure of the evaporator is presented. The development of the governing equations is described, and model results are shown for the baseline evaporator design used at JPL. The future objective is to use the model to find the optimal configuration that maximizes the heat removal on the top surface of the wick structure considering particle size, porosity, effective thermal conductivity, and wick structure thickness. The numerical model, combined with the experimental results, will provide an optimization tool in terms of improvement in the heat loads management.

Description

Luca Valdarno, University of California, Los Angeles, US
Vijay K. Dhir, University of California, Los Angeles, US
Benjamin Furst, National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), US
Eric Sunada, National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), US
ICES201: Two-Phase Thermal Control Technology
The proceedings for the 2020 International Conference on Environmental Systems were published from July 31, 2020. The technical papers were not presented in person due to the inability to hold the event as scheduled in Lisbon, Portugal because of the COVID-19 global pandemic.

Keywords

Evaporation, Porous structure, Heat transfer modeling, Two-phase mechanically pumped loop, Spacecraft thermal control

Citation