Prediction of thermal contact resistance for reusable heat-pipe cooled thermal protection system based on an inverse thermo-mechanical coupling method

authored by

Chunyun Zhang, Peng Yu, Chengbao Sun, Haifeng Peng, Miao Cui, Bingbing Xu

Abstract

Thermal contact resistance (TCR) is a critical characteristic on increasing or decreasing thermal energy transmission efficiency between two bodies in thermal management systems. However, it is difficult to accurately determine the thermal contact resistance in actual engineering structures, due to the complicated influence factors, such as pressure, temperature, and physical properties. In the work, a new method is presented to estimate the thermal contact resistance for a three-dimensional (3D) reusable heat-pipe cooled thermal protection system based on boundary measurements, by solving transient inverse thermo-mechanical coupling problems. Moreover, the thermal contact resistance varies with interface pressure, temperature, and spatial position, which is more practical and challenging. The thermo-mechanical coupling analysis is conducted by the finite element method, and the inversion is carried out by the gradient-based algorithm. First, the present method is validated by identifying the constant TCR, based on the available experimental data. Then, the thermal contact resistance with the functional form in the 3D reusable thermal protection system is accurately estimated. Finally, the convergence stability and robustness of the proposed method are evaluated, by considering the effects of initial guess value and measurement error, respectively. The accurate determination of thermal contact resistance of the reusable thermal protection system effectively avoids the overweight of aircraft and improves its utilization. The present work provides a novel approach for the determination of thermal contact resistance in actual engineering applications.

Organisation(s)

Institute of Continuum Mechanics

External Organisation(s)

Dalian University of Technology

Type

Article

Journal

Renewable energy

Volume

227

No. of pages

8

ISSN

0960-1481

Publication date

23.04.2024

Publication status

E-pub ahead of print

Peer reviewed

Yes

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Renewable Energy, Sustainability and the Environment

Sustainable Development Goals

SDG 7 - Affordable and Clean Energy

Electronic version(s)

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.renene.2024.120541 (Access: Open)