Research On Cryogenic Loop Heat Pipes

As an advanced satellite thermal control equipment, cryogenic loop heat pipe (CLHP) is a two-phase heat transport device which can start-up and operate below 120 K. It is mainly used for the thermal control of optical surfaces, infrared scanning systems. As the separation of vapor line and liquid line, CLHP is capable of transfer large heat loads over long distances with small temperature differentials, it is of high conductivity, high reliability and easy to control. As a result, CLHP is considered to be one of the most promising thermal-control equipment of spacecrafts in the future. But to date, there are few investigations on CLHP in internal and more studies in detail are needed.In this paper, one sample of the cryogenic loop heat pipe system was designed and constructed. The performances of this system were tested, including the start-up characteristics, the heat transfer characteristics and the effects of the amount of working fluids to operation characteristics. The experimental results indicated that this system can start-up successfully and operate stably.