Capillary Fluid Loop Developments in Astrium

Over the past decade, Astrium has been involved in the development of capillary pumped fluid loops. In the frame of the French technological demonstrator spacecraft called STENTOR, Astrium has gained experience on capillary fluid loop design and manufacturing. After the STENTOR cylindrical evaporator type was successfully tested and qualified, Astrium has developed miniaturised fluid loops for thermal dissipation of electronic devices. For such applications, the use of a flat shape evaporator is very promising, limiting the volume and the mass of the thermal hardware. Both technologies have been submitted. to a comprehensive-one-g test program and will be flight-tested in the near future.Through a comparative of the reached performances, some main advantages and drawbacks of each design are listed and a definition of what should be the next generation of Astrium. fluid loops is given. (C) 2003 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.