Case study on thermal design improvement of hydrazine monopropellant pipelines for satellite propulsion system

Abstract

The present research investigates a case study on thermal design and improvement of hydrazine monopropellant pipelines based on actual cases, in order to highlight the critical factors for thermal design when developing an onboard propulsion system for a satellite. A simple 1-D thermal math model was developed for thermal analysis using the lumped-parameter assumption, and three different thermal design cases of hydrazine propellant pipeline layouts were considered. By increasing heater power densities and applying modified worst cold boundary conditions for thermal analysis, the thermal design performance for the propellant pipelines of an actual satellite could be improved and verified through thermal vacuum test.After the successful operation of the pipeline heaters in the real space environment, some important lessons learned on thermal design improvements of hydrazine monopropellant pipeline layout could be attained from the present case study. These lessons learned will be useful for the future development of satellite onboard propulsion systems.

Keywords

• Satellite
• Propulsion system
• Thermal design
• Thermal analysis
• Thermal math model
• Thermal network method