小型水下作业设备相变热控技术研究

Research on Thermal Control of Small Underwater Device with Phase Change Material

小型水下作业设备在海洋资源探测与利用领域扮演着重要角色。随着水下作业设备不断向多功能、智能化、长续航和大深度方向发展,设备内部功率元器件不断增多,散热问题日益严峻。文中提出了一种小型水下作业设备储热模块,采用相变材料被动吸热方式对设备内部发热元器件进行散热。研究了典型热功率条件下相变储热模块的热控性能,并对比了不同类型相变材料的热控效果。结果表明:相比于原有的自然冷却方式,低熔点金属镓相变储热模块可显著抑制热源的温升,将设备的正常工作时间有效延长至原来的2.7倍,起到良好的热防护作用;而有机相变材料因其传热性能差,反而阻碍了热量向外壳传递,恶化了设备的散热性能。文中提出的相变热控模块具有零功耗、储热密度大、工作性能稳定等特点。利用设备原有的壳体空间填充相变材料,不额外增加体积,不影响设备内部空间,可实现相变吸热和自然冷却耦合并行散热,有效防止设备内部器件或设备发生过热损坏,为水下无人作业设备持续、安全、稳定、高效工作提供热防护保障。

The small underwater device plays an important role in the field of ocean resource detection and utilization.With development of underwater device towards multi-function,intelligence,long endurance and high submergence depth,there are more and more power components in the device and their heat dissipation issue is increasingly serious.In this paper a thermal control module for a small underwater device is proposed based on phase change material(PCM).Passive heat absorption with PCM is adopted for heat dissipation of the power components in the device.The thermal control performance of the PCM module under typical thermal power conditions is studied and different types of PCM are compared.The results show that low melting point metal PCM gallium can significantly suppress the temperature rise of the heat source and extend the normal working time of the device to 2.7 times as compared with original natural cooling method.However,when organic PCM octadecane is used,the heat dissipation performance is deteriorated,mainly due to the poor heat transfer performance of organic PCM,which hinders the heat transfer through the hull.The PCM thermal control module proposed in this paper has advantages of zero power consumption,high heat storage density and stable working performance.Filling the original hull space with PCM does not increase the volume of device and does not change the internal space of device.Therefore,natural cooling and heat absorption with PCM can be adopted for heat dissipation simultaneously.This can effectively prevent overheating damage of internal electronic components and ensure continuous,safe,stable and efficient operation of the underwater device.