With the development of high power dissipation, low thermal inertia and cyclical operation units in space application, such as high power amplifier, the phase change material (PCM) technology seems to be a proper thermal solution. In this study, the benefit of PCM device on temperature stability is verified with the analysis result of FORMOSAT-5 satellite. The solution is also expected to reduce the required radiator area and heating power. However, the adopted materials usually have drawback of low thermal conductivity that leads to large thermal resistance. This paper thus presents both numerical and experimental investigations on configuration design of PCM's container. A comparison is carried out between the container with and without internal pin-fins. The results show the effectiveness of pin-fins that act as the thermal conductivity enhancer (TCE) to improve the temperature uniformity. Furthermore, experimental tests for four candidate materials, that is, n-octadecane, n-eicosane, glycerin and gallium, are presented. The thermal behaviors of melting, solidification, and supercooling on these materials are compared with available literature data and discussed in this study.


    Access

    Check access

    Check availability in my library

    Order at Subito €


    Export, share and cite



    Title :

    An investigation on phase change device for satellite thermal control


    Contributors:


    Publication date :

    2016-07-01


    Size :

    945753 byte




    Type of media :

    Conference paper


    Type of material :

    Electronic Resource


    Language :

    English




    Passive satellite thermal control structure based on phase change heat storage

    CHEN ZHEN / SONG JUNJIE / ZHAO XIAODONG | European Patent Office | 2024

    Free access

    Development of phase change thermal control device

    SCHELDEN, B. / GOLDEN, J. | AIAA | 1972


    Autonomous control method of satellite-borne phase change energy storage device

    CHEN XI / PEI NAN / MING JIAN et al. | European Patent Office | 2024

    Free access