Design and Analysis of a Hollow Metallic Microlattice Active Cooling System for Microsatellites

Microsatellites have stringent demands for thermal dissipation systems with high efficiency but low weight, which is a difficult combination to obtain using current technologies. The design method of a new cooling system consisting of hollow metallic microlattice material filled with liquid is developed and proposed, and its heat dissipation performance is analyzed through experimental tests and numerical simulations. Through the analysis results of the influences of the microstructures of the hollow microlattice material, it is found that the effective coefficient (the number of channels taking part in convection) has the highest influence on the heat dissipation performance. Numerical simulation results illustrated that the heating surface temperature can be reduced to 301.7 K through special design, which can meet the heat dissipation requirement of most microsatellites. The new microlattice cooling system in this study improves heat dissipation performance while having very low structural weight, thus providing a feasible substitute for thermal control systems in microsatellites.