Characteristics and optimation of heat pipe radiator for space nuclear propulsion spacecraft

With the maturity of nuclear reactor miniaturization technology and the increasing demand of human space exploration, nuclear powered spacecraft is expected to become a reality. With the continuous exploration of the deep universe by mankind, the capacity of the heat dissipation of the space radiators is required continuously be improved, which leads to the increasing weight and economical decline of the spacecraft. The heat pipe radiator has advantage that other radiators cannot compare with. In this paper, the finite difference method and the iterative method are used to study the influence of fin width, inlet temperature, length of the heat pipe condensing section, and coolant mass flow rate on the weight and the heat dissipation area of the heat pipe radiator. Taking the weight and the heat dissipation area of the radiator as the optimization goals, the whale optimization algorithm is used to optimize the design parameters of the heat pipe radiator with a given heat dissipation. ANSYS fluent is used to simulate and analyze the heat pipe-fin unit with the best design parameters.