Optimization of a space based radiator

Nowadays there is an increased demand in satellite weight reduction for the reduction of costs. Thermal control system designers have to face the challenge of reducing both the weight of the system and required heater power while maintaining the components temperature within their design ranges. The main purpose of this paper is to present an optimization of a heat pipe radiator applied to a practical engineering design application. For this study, a communications satellite payload panel was considered. Four radiator areas were defined instead of a centralized one in order to improve the heat rejection into space; the radiator’s dimensions were determined considering worst hot scenario, solar fluxes, heat dissipation and the component’s design temperature upper limit. Dimensions, thermal properties of the structural panel, optical properties and degradation/contamination on thermal control coatings were also considered. A thermal model was constructed for thermal analysis and two heat pipe network designs were evaluated and compared. The model that allowed better radiator efficiency was selected for parametric thermal analysis and optimization. This pursues finding the minimum size of the heat pipe network while keeping complying with thermal control requirements without increasing power consumption.