Development and testing of a two-phase mechanically pumped loop for active antennae

Abstract

The satellite telecommunications industry is currently undergoing significant evolutions. Future communication satellites need to accommodate a rapidly growing demand in data transfer, combined with more flexibility. For example, there is a strong need for Very High Throughput Satellites capable of delivering up to Tb/s over wide coverage areas. This is only possible when an active phased array antenna is used. However, cooling of active antennas requires the use of a highly efficient thermal control system because it has many heat sources (from hundreds to several thousands), high local heat fluxes (20 W/cm² at evaporator interface), high overall dissipation (around 10 kW), and isothermal requirements on the amplifier chain. These conditions are very difficult to meet with current thermal control solutions (e.g. heat pipes or loop heat pipes), but require a two-phase mechanically pumped fluid loop (MPL). In a MPL, a pump circulates a fluid which evaporates when it absorbs the waste heat from the active antenna. In the IMPACTA project, a demonstrator for such a MPL is being designed and build. This paper describes the test results for the IMPACTA demonstrator. The demonstrator is able to cool a total heat load of 9.8 kW divided over 10 parallel branches with a better than 2°C spatial temperature uniformity over the heat sources. In an active antenna application, the heat load can be unevenly distributed over the different branches. Tests show that even in the extreme case when half of the branches are turned off and the other half are set to full power, no sign of dry-out or too high temperatures is observed, demonstrating the ability of the MPL to cool imbalanced payloads. The demonstrator was tested in 3 different orientations and the test results are similar for all orientations, indicating that the system is not sensitive to gravity effects.