Experimental study of the influences of degraded vacuum on multilayer insulation blankets

The paper presented experimental investigation on the heat transfer of MLI with different rarefied gases at different pressures. The investigations were carried out using an innovative static liquid nitrogen boil-off rate measurement system in the case of the small temperature perturbations of cold and warm boundaries. The heat fluxes for a number of inert and some polyatomic gases have been analyzed at different heat transfer conditions ranging from molecular to continuum regime, apparent thermal conductivities of the multilayer insulation were measured over a wide range of temperature (77 K–300 K) and pressure (10⁻³–10⁵ Pa) using the apparatus. The experimental results indicated that under degraded vacuum condition, the influences of rarefied gas on the MLI thermal performance very depend on the gas rarefaction degree which impacted by the MLI vacuum degree. Under the condition of molecular regime heat transfer, the MLI thermal performance was greatly influenced by gas energy accommodation coefficients (EAC), when under the continuum regime, the performances depend on the thermal conductivity of rarefied gas itself. Compared to the results of N₂, Ar, CO₂, Air and He as interstitial gases in the MLI, Ar was the better selection as space gas because of its low EAC and thermal conductivity characteristics on the different vacuum condition ranging from high pressure to vacuum. So different residual gases can be utilized according to the vacuum level and gas energy accommodation coefficient, in order to improve the insulation performance of low vacuum MLI.