Abstract
This paper presents the whole view of the development of a Reservoir Embedded Looped Heat Pipe (RELHP) for a deployable radiator (DPR) in the Engineering Test Satellite VIII (ETS-VIII) that was launched on December 2006. The RELHP has the stainless steel porous wick with pore diameter of 1μm and working fluid of ammonia. The evaporator core is used as a liquid reservoir to enhance operational reliability. Mathematical models for predicting static and transient heat transfer characteristics of RELHP were developed. Evaporative heat transfer coefficient in a wick and heat transfer between vapor phase and liquid puddle in the reservoir are taken into consideration in the models. Several experiments to investigate the heat transfer characteristics of the RELHP were conducted and compared with the prediction. The practical RELHP model showed larger heat transport capacity than specified 1kW. The temperature distribution in the RELHP for the ETS-VIII tested in a vacuum chamber showed good agreement with the prediction. The experiments in space of the DPR in the ETS-VIII are now in operation and shows satisfactory data.
