Design and Transient Performance of a Liquid Coolant System

An analytical investigation of the design and transient performance of a representative space vehicle thermal control system is used to transfer waste heat from the vehicle's environmental control/life support system to a space radiator. The system was designed by suboptimizing system components on the basis of weight and power at various flow rates, and subsequently finding the minimum total system penalty and corresponding system flow rate. With Freon 21 as the heat transport fluid, the transient analyses indicated that heat loads as low as 20% of the design heat load were permissible without causing incipient freezing of the Freon in the radiator tubes.