Experimental investigation of liquid transport in a vane type tank of satellite with microgravity

Abstract Propellant tank is used to store the propellant in propulsion system of satellite. Propellant management device (PMD) is the key component in propellant tank to manage the liquid propellant under zero gravity. In this paper, a microgravity drop tower test system was established to investigate the performance of vanes and refillable reservoir separately. Single module is used for experiment tests, and the microgravity level is between 10 − 2  g 0 and 10 − 3  g 0 . Vane is fixed in a plexiglas container which provide a visual windows for the inner flow distribution. The anhydrous ethanol is used as analogue liquid. Different kinds of vanes were used to study influence of the geometry on the transport performance. Experiment tests of refillable reservoir were performed with different direction of gravity. Changes of liquid-gas interface during the test are studied. The width of the vane is related to the velocity of the liquid flow along the vane. The liquid climbing height along vane under microgravity is proportional to the time t 1 / 2 . Experiment results show that the direction of microgravity has great effect on the expulsion efficiency of a vane type tank. Experimental results provide a favorable reference for further optimization design of vanes and refillable reservoir.