Design of a Heat Pipe for a Lunar Lander

Inhaltsangabe:Introduction: At the Milwaukee School of Engineering, senior students are required to take part in a Senior Design Project during their final year for 2 to 3 quarters. The project is a group project related to a field in mechanical engineering. Students participating in the exchange program between MSOE and Fachhochschule Lübeck have to be enrolled in the Senior Design Project for 3 quarters. During this time the student has to write his or her diploma thesis as an individual work within the topic of the project. This Senior Design Project was in the section ‘Energy systems’. The task as a group was to design a thermal control system for a Lunar Lander (see Figure 1.1) in cooperation with NASA´s Exploration System Mission Directorate. ‘A Lunar Lander will be exposed to extreme temperature differences. There is a need to control the thermal environment within the lander in order to provide functionality for both personnel and equipment. Previous lunar missions utilized consumable materials for cooling. Future lunar missions will require a more robust thermal control approach, one that allows longer duration missions while minimizing resources. Compared to the previous Lunar Lander, the new lander will be larger to include an additional astronaut as well as additional equipment. The thermal control system must be capable of handling this increase in thermal energy. After the evaluation of a number of possible systems based on research and in depth feasibility in the fall quarter the three most promising systems were chosen by the group to be examined in greater detail. The aim of this project was then to produce a design for each of the remaining thermal control systems until the end of the winter quarter’.. The first two quarters ended with a presentation of our accomplishments to a committee of professors at MSOE and an invitation to the Marshall Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama by NASA to present our designs to a committee of scientists. For the spring quarter we chose two experiments to be performed. One was the building of a vacuum chamber in order to test the thermal properties of the lunar regolith simulant. The other one was the building and testing of the heat pipe design.Inhaltsverzeichnis:Table of Contents: List of Figures5 List of Tables6 1.Introduction7 1.1The Senior Design Project at MSOE7 1.2The Specifications and Requirements given by NASA8 1.3The Focus of my Thesis10 1.4The Schedule for the Completion [...]