A Dual-driven Intelligent Combination Control of Heat Pipe Space Cooling System

Effective thermal control systems are essential for reliable operation of spacecraft. A dual-driven intelligent combination control strategy is proposed to improve the temperate control and heat flux tracking effects. Both temperature regulation and heat flux tracking errors are employed to generate the final control action; their contributions are adaptively adjusted by a fuzzy fusing policy of control actions. To evaluate the control effects, describe a four-nodal mathematical model for analyzing the dynamic characteristics of the controlled heat pipe space cooling system (HP-SCS) consisting of an aluminum-ammonia heat pipe and a variable-emittance micro-electromechanical-system (MEMS) radiator. This dynamical model calculates the mass flow-rate and condensing pressure of the heat pipe working fluid directly from the systemic nodal temperatures, therefore, it is more suitable for control engineering applications. The closed-loop transient performances of four different control schemes have been numerically investigated. The results conclude that the proposed intelligent combination control scheme not only improves the thermal control effects but also benefits the safe operation of HP-SCS.