Evaluation of Effective Emissivity of a Multilayer Insulation Blanket Using Test

Abstract

The intention of this paper is to discuss the results obtained from tests conducted at Amirkabir University of Technology Thermal Control Lab on multilayer insulation (MLI) blankets designed and fabricated in university, describing the thermal performance of test specimens at different environmental temperatures. We have evaluated the MLI performance by experimentally measuring our MLI’s emissivity factor. For this purpose we have defined our experiments based on the effective emissivity model. Fabricated MLI blankets are tested in a vacuum chamber at an approximate pressure of 10-6mbar and temperatures of approximately 30°C and -70°C, while subjected to heat with the power input in the range of 1.0 to 2.5 Watts. Results show that the measured effective emissivity is within the range of other reported experimental data.

Keywords

• thermal radiation
• effective emissivity
• multilayer insulations
• radiation insulations
• satellite