Evaluation of Thermal Conductivity of Polyimide Foam for Space -Development of Simple and Small Steady State Apparatus using Heat Flow Separation Method and Numerical Analysis using Monte Carlo Method-

Abstract

Insulation materials for spacecraft are required to have high radiation resistance, high heat insulation, high heat resistance, and light weight. Therefore, we focus on polyimide foam that has these characteristics. Since a simple and compact evaluation device is desired in the development stage of a new thermal insulation, we are trying to measure the effective thermal conductivity of a small sample with a diameter of 52 mm. In general, the effective thermal conductivity of a thermal insulation is measured by the guarded hot plate method, but in this paper we aimed to downsize the device by using a simple design that does not use a guarded hot plate. However, since the sample to be measured is high insulation and small, the effect of heat leak is relatively large and the reliability of the measured value degrades. Therefore, we applied the heat flow separation method using the temperature difference between the samples. In addition, analysis of heat transfer using Monte Carlo method was introduced.