Design and Analysis of an Axially Grooved Heat Pipe

Abstract

Continued development of highly compact and sensitive electronic components hasled to the need for a simple and eective method for controlling the thermal charac-teristics of these devices. Temperature control is a critical issue in sensitive devicessuch as CCDs, sensors etc. in optical payloads related to space applications. It isdicult to control temperature of these devices in vacuum because of sudden risein temperature gradient. Initially dierent thermal control techniques in spacecrafthave been discussed. The need for simple and reliable methods for dissipating preciseamounts of thermal energy while maintaining the operating temperature of small-scale, heat-producing electronic devices under a variety of operating conditions invacuum the heat pipe has been selected for mathematical optimized design.Heat pipe is one of the eective component for controlling the temperature of sensi-tive devices. The advantage of heat pipe is its ecient heat transfer with minimumtemperature gradient. Its passive operation removes the need of costly maintenanceoperation of onboard system of very much costlier spacecraft electronics components.Axially grooved heat pipes are having good operation capabilities in zero gravity.Axially grooved heat pipe is designed for required heat transport capability withminimum temperature gradient, also with least pressure drop. An axially groovedheat pipe has been optimized by choosing appropriate working uid and materialto achieve maximum heat transfer rate in a very stringent space constraint. Designand analysis of a heat pipe is required to study the optimum design area for satelliteapplication by showing the parameter dependency on each other by generating AI(Articial Intelligence) based MATLAB Code. MATLAB Code gives the self inde-pendency to prioritise the working uids from the available working uids. It givesthe broader choice to identify the best parameters for the good performance beforeactual manufacturing is done.