Thermal performance of foam/MLI for cryogenic liquid hydrogen tank during the ascent and on orbit period

• Published in: Applied thermal engineering 2016-04, Vol.98, p.430-439
• Main Authors: Liu, Zhan, Li, Yanzhong, Xie, Fushou, Zhou, Ke
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Aerodynamic heat; Ascent; Foams; Heat transfer; Insulation performance; Liquid hydrogen; Mathematical models; MLI; On orbit; Space radiation; Storage tanks; Tanks; Thermal engineering
• ISSN: 1359-4311
• DOI: 10.1016/j.applthermaleng.2015.12.084

•MLI's insulation performance during the ascent and on-orbit process is investigated.•Three main heat transfer modes are briefly researched.•Thermal resistance distributions of foam and MLI are compared in detail.•Aerodynamic heat and space radiations are fully considered. This paper developed one quasi-steady state model to investigate the thermal performances of foam and MLI for a cryogenic liquid hydrogen tank during the ascent and on-orbit process. The corresponding parameters of MLI were calculated with temperature range from 55 K to 700 K, and pressure range between 10−6 Pa and 105 Pa during the whole process. Changes of physical properties with the flight height or the flight cycle were fully considered. The present developed model was validated by the experimental results and turned out to have high prediction ability. Iterated from outside to inside of the MLI layer with the dichotomy method, three main heat transfer forms were specially investigated and compared. Thermal resistance distributions of foam and MLI were compared in detail, and their contributions to reduce the heat leakage were analyzed thoroughly. Some valuable conclusions were of significance to optimize the design of foam/MLI for cryogenic storage tanks.