Active Antenna thermal dissipation management

  • Status
    Completed
  • Status date
    2014-04-02
  • Activity Code
    4D.007
Objectives
The objectives are:
  • To design, manufacture and test a thermal control device able to evacuate a high power generated by a compact active antenna Breadboard (4 kW) made of 97 Direct Radiating Arrays (DRA) dummies
  • To demonstrate that the Mechanically Pumped Loop (MPL) complies with the specification of high power rejection and a very low gradient between all radiative elements.
  • To show that a very dissipative Active Antenna can be thermally controlled with high accuracy.
Challenges

The main challenge of this development is to develop and test a two-phases thermal control device able to comply with the high power rejection need, the high power density at evaporator I/F coupled with the requirement of less than 2°C between all dissipative elements. A trade-off on thermal control concepts has shown that the Mechanically Pumped Loop device is the only one able to comply with active antenna requirements, both in terms of accommodation constraint (DRAs are very small and very close each other)

Benefits

Validation that a highly dissipative active antenna can be thermally controlled by a thermal control device fulfilling the thermal requirements.

Plan
The project has been carried out with the following milestones:
 
Concept Selection
June 2009
Design report
October 2009
Antenna Mock-up Specification
February 2010
Demonstrator Model Report
July 2010
AATDM Test Plan
April 2012
TRR
May 2012
AATDM Test Predictions
May 2012
AATDM Test Report
March 2013
TRB
April 2013
AATDM Final Report
June 2013
Current status

Final review has been hold in June 2013