CU AEROSPACE L.L.C. — Department of Defense SBIR Phase I: N161-062

Description

The mass and cost of low temperature Joule-Thomson and Brayton cryocoolers can be greatly reduced with a better recuperator configuration. CU Aerospace (CUA) and team partner Lockheed Martin Space Systems Company (LMSSC) propose to develop a robust, anisotropic recuperative heat exchanger capable of excellent heat exchange efficiency with low cost and low mass. This technology relies on 3D weaving of sacrificial fibers into a polymeric matrix, which are subsequently vaporized to obtain a uniform array of capillaries. By weaving these sacrificial fibers with a perpendicular array of copper wires and using computational modeling to optimize the design, this device can achieve good lateral thermal conductance while retaining very low parasitic heat conductance. This recuperator geometry can be tailored to a wide variety of cryocooler temperatures and heat loads by scaling the width and length of the recuperator. The performance benefit derived from the inherently anisotropic thermal characteristics of the woven structure will lead to a new class of low cost, high performance recuperator configurations beneficial for many cryogenic applications requiring counterflow heat exchange.