Integrated Sublimator Driven Coldplate for use in Active Thermal Control System

The original Sublimator Driven Coldplate (SDC) design sought to provide significant mass savings over a traditional pumped fluid loop by combining the functions of a cold plate and a sublimator and eliminating the fluid loop (Leimkuehler, et. al., "Design of a Sublimator Driven Coldplate Development Unit," 2008-01-2169). The target application was to provide heat rejection for the ascent module of the Altair lunar lander vehicle during the lunar ascent mission phase. However, in order to provide heat rejection for the ascent module during the rest of the mission, it is desirable to keep the ascent module integrated with the fluid loop in the rest of the Altair vehicle. Therefore, we propose an Integrated Sublimator Driven Coldplate (ISDC) that can function as both a standard flow-through cold plate and a Sublimator Driven Coldplate. The ISDC builds on the original SDC concept by adding coolant layers so that it can be integrated with the pumped fluid loop on the rest of the vehicle. This approach provides mass savings by (1) combining multiple pieces of hardware into a single piece of hardware and (2) providing additional fault tolerance without the need for redundant hardware.

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