Thermal performance of a 3D printed lattice-structure heat sink packaging phase change material

Thermal storage technology is becoming more and more significant with the increase of high-power equipment in space applications. In this paper, 3D printing technology and Phase Change Material (PCM) were combined into a Thermal Energy Storage (TES) system, which could fulfill the requirements of light weight and high thermal conductivity. A 3D-printed lattice-structure TES plate with N-tetradecane as the PCM and aluminum alloy as the thermal conductivity enhancer was manufactured, and experimentally tested in a thermal vacuum chamber. In addition, a simplified simulation model of the lattice cell was established to clearly analyze the heat transfer process of the TES plate. The effects of initial temperature distribution and heat load gradient on the thermal storage performances were investigated experimentally and theoretically. The equivalent thermal conductivity of the 3D-printed lattice-structure TES plate turns out to be 13 times of the pure PCM thanks to the aluminum skeleton. The heat transfer enhancement appears at the end of the phase change stage due to the sudden mixture of the PCM with different temperature. The simulation results agree well with the experimental data. The equivalent thermal conductivity obtained by the phase change simulations are a little higher than those of the experiments, which is mainly caused by the initial uneven temperature distribution in the tests. Additionally, the effects of non-uniform heat load and the presence of the PCM in the TES plate are studied. This work successfully validates the feasibility and effectiveness of 3D printing technology and TES technology for the temperature control in space applications.