Numerical investigation on heat-transfer and hydromechanical performance inside contaminant-insensitive sublimators under a vacuum environment for spacecraft applications

Abstract

The contaminant-insensitive sublimator (CIS) is a novel water sublimator in development, which uses two porous substrates to separate the sublimation point from the pressure-control point and provide long-life effective cooling for spacecraft. Many essential studies need to be carried out in the field. To overcome the reliability issues such as ice breakthrough caused by large temperature or pressure differences, the CIS development unit model, the mathematical models of heat and mass transfer and the evaluation coefficient have been established. Numerical investigations have been implemented aiming at the impacts of physical properties of porous substrate, physical properties of working fluid, orifice layouts and orifice-structure parameters on the characteristics of flow field and temperature field. The numerical investigation shows some valuable conclusion, such as the temperature uniformity coefficient at the bottom surface of the large pore substrate is 0.997669 and the pressure uniformity coefficient at the same surface is 0.85361267. These numerical results can provide structure and data reference for the CIS design of lunar probe or spacesuit.