Design Method of Heat Pipe Array’s Layout for Lunar Polar Water Ice Mining

Abstract

To exploit water ice in-situ resources in lunar polar region, a design method of heat pipe array’s layout was proposed in this paper. Firstly, the heat pipe array was presented according to the water ice mining scheme, and heat conduction process of heat pipe array was numerically solved by three-dimensional finite difference method. Secondly, the objective function of water production and heat flow consumption was established. Genetic algorithm was used to optimize the layout of heat pipe array, and the optimal solution of heat pipe’s layout was acquired by iterative search. Simulation results show that the optimal layout of heat pipe array could obtain maximum water production with minimum heat flow consumption. Besides, mass of water ice collected in a task and total time required were given. The application of this design method to life support system of lunar base can improve the efficiency of polar in-situ resources’ collection.

Keywords

water ice mining / heat pipe array / genetic algorithm / optimization problem