A Rapid CubeSat Demonstration of an Additive Manufactured Battery Case with Embedded Oscillating Heat Pipes

The CubeSat Technology Exploration Project (CubeSTEP) is developing a test platform for the rapid maturation of emerging spacecraft technologies. This paper presents the development of a CubeSat demonstration for an innovative Additively Manufactured (AM) battery thermal control system utilizing Oscillating Heat Pipes (OHP). In an effort to mature this technology, two OHP battery case designs were developed by Cal Poly Pomona (CPP) in collaboration with NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). The AM-OHP battery cases were designed to be integrated and tested onboard the CubeSTEP platform. The spacecraft structure and the OHPs are additively manufactured with metal powder-based fusion techniques using AlSi10Mg. The CubeSat bus and the OHP integrated battery case have been designed for printing to minimize clean-up, powder removal, and post-processing. This work presents the preliminary design and development of the CubeSTEP platform. It also showcases the results obtained from testing the Horizontal Weave Design (HWD) battery case, which demonstrated a significant increase in conductance when comparing the battery case when charged with the working fluid, R134a, and when emptied of the working fluid. The system design utilizes structural topology optimization and highlights the application of additive manufacturing for rapid prototyping in SmallSat development.