Design and experimental study of thermal control system for AMS cryocoolers

Abstract

The Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS) is an instrument for the international scientific experiment, composed of six detectors and 650 micro-electronics. The objective of AMS experiment is to search for dark matter and anti-matter in space. In this paper, the thermal control system for AMS cryocoolers is designed, analyzed and experimentally studied. Using loop heat pipes (LHPs) as the main heat dissipation component, the thermal control system has sufficient heat dissipation capability to prevent the cryocoolers from over temperature (+40°C) in hot environment, meanwhile to ensure temperatures of the cryocoolers higher than their lower limit (-20°C) in cold environment. Experiment results show that the thermal control system for AMS cryocoolers functions stably satisfying design specification. © 2013 The Author(s).