In the thermal management of spacecraft, space thermal radiators play a vital role as heat sinks. A serial radiator with proven advantages in ground applications is proposed and analyzed for space applications. From the performance analysis, specific heat rejection (SHR) of serial radiator is found to be higher than parallel radiator by 80% for maximum diameter of the tube, 47% for maximum thickness of the fin, and 75% for maximum pitch of the tubes under consideration. Also, serial radiator requires four times higher pumping power than parallel radiator with geometric parameters and a maximum mass flowrate under consideration. In serial radiators, the cross conduction between the fins has a significant effect on its thermal performance. Thus, conjugate heat transfer simulations and optimization operations are to be performed iteratively to optimize the serial radiator, which is computationally costly. To reduce the computational time, artificial neural network (ANN) is trained using conjugate heat transfer simulations data and combined with the genetic algorithm (GA) to perform optimization. Taguchi’s orthogonal arrays provided the partial fraction of conjugate heat transfer simulations set to train the ANN. Taguchi-Neuro-Genetic approach, a process that combines the features of three powerful techniques in different optimization phases, is used to optimize both parallel and serial radiators. The optimization aims to obtain a configuration that provides the lowest mass and lowest pumping power requirement for given heat rejection. Optimization results show that the conventional parallel radiator is about 20% heavier and requires about 35% more pumping power than the proposed serial radiator.
Space thermal radiators play a significant role in the thermal management of spacecraft. With the increase in heat dissipation requirement, the heat pipe radiators are being replaced by mechanically pumped fluid loop radiators. In recent years, authors proved that optimum serpentine serial radiators are advantageous over conventional optimum parallel radiators in terms of the mass and pressure drop. The spiral radiators, inspired by spiral plate heat exchangers, are proposed and analyzed as a replacement for the serpentine serial radiators. Performance analysis of radiators is carried out using conjugate heat transfer analysis. Conjugate heat transfer results are validated with the experimental results obtained from the literature. The performance analysis indicated that the circular spiral radiator performs better than the other two types due to their lower mass and pressure drop. Optimization of radiators is carried out using Taguchi Signal to Noise ratio analysis. Analysis of Variance is conducted to determine the percentage contribution of each variable to the performance of the radiator. When lower pressure drop requirement is prominent, the contribution of the diameter of the tube is 79.3%, whereas the contribution of fin thickness and pitch of the tubes are only 6.1% and 8.2%, respectively. The contribution of the fin thickness is 57.39%, the diameter of the tube is 37.71%, and the pitch of the tubes is 1.89% when the lower mass of the radiator is the prime requirement. The high-performance spiral radiators may find their application in the thermal management of human space flights and high-power GEO satellites.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
hi@scite.ai
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.