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Technical Paper

Transient Characterization of a Propylene Loop Heat Pipe During Startup and Shut-down

2000-07-10
2000-01-2408
A technology demonstration Loop Heat Pipe (LHP) has been tested extensively in support of the implementation of this two-phase thermal control technology on NASA's Earth Observing System Tropospheric Emission Spectrometer (TES) instrument. This cryogenic instrument is being developed at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory for NASA. This paper reports on the transient characterization testing results for a propylene LHP. Steady state performance and model correlation results can be found elsewhere [1]. In applications, when a component of large mass on an instrument or spacecraft is attached to a LHP evaporator, there is a concern that the LHP will not start when power is applied to the component until a significant temperature overshoot from the equilibrium temperature is developed. In some space applications, this may be a problem because the maximum allowable flight temperatures (AFTs) may be exceeded.
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