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ACTA AERONAUTICAET ASTRONAUTICA SINICA ›› 2018, Vol. 39 ›› Issue (9): 122046-122053.doi: 10.7527/S1000-6893.2018.22046

• Fluid Mechanics and Flight Mechanics • Previous Articles     Next Articles

Influence of self-strengthening effect of porous plate icing on water sublimators' performance

LIU Chang, NING Xianwen, MIAO Jianyin, WANG Yuying, LYU Wei, WANG Lu   

  1. Beijing Key Laboratory of Space Thermal Control Technology, Beijing Institute of Spacecraft System Engineering(ISSE), Beijing 100094, China
  • Received:2018-01-25 Revised:2018-02-19 Online:2018-09-15 Published:2018-04-11
  • Supported by:
    National Science and Technology Major Project; National Natural Science Foundation of China (11472040)

Abstract: The water sublimator is a heat rejection device widely used in the spacecraft thermal control system, which uses water as the consumptive medium by taking advantage of the sublimation phase change of water. During the startup and operation processes of the water sublimator, frost expansion in the porous plate will reshape the microscopic structure of the plate. Due to the effect of strain hardening, the plasticity of the porous plate will decrease and the structural parameters will be fixed after the water sublimator operates for many times, which is defined here as self-strengthening of the porous plate. As a consequence, the macroscopic performances of the water sublimator, e.g. steady-state heat rejection and ability of anti-breakthrough will be affected. In this paper, experimental research on self-strengthening effect of the porous plate on the water sublimator is carried out. The results show that for the specific water sublimator structure involved in this paper, the steady-state heat rejection decreases with the increase of the times of startup under the same condition, and the decrease rate slows down gradually. The steady-state heat rejection of the water sublimator is stabilized after 3-4 times of startup. A fitting formula that describes the relationship between steady-state heat rejection and times of startup is provided. The effect of self-strengthening behaves more notably as the permeability of the porous plate increases, and the effect can improve the anti-breakthrough ability of the plate. This research can offer some references for the design of the third mission of the moon exploration of China.

Key words: water sublimators, porous plate, self-strengthening effect, icing, spacecraft thermal control

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