Heat balance and thermal management of the TMT Observatory

An extensive campaign of aero-thermal modeling of the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) has been carried out and presented in other papers. This paper presents a summary view of overall heat balance of the TMT observatory. A key component of this heat balance that can be managed is the internal sources of heat dissipation to the ambient air inside the enclosure. An engineering budget for both daytime and nighttime sources is presented. This budget is used to ensure that the overall effects on daytime cooling and nighttime seeing are tracked and fall within the modeled results that demonstrate that the observatory meets its performance requirements. In the daytime heat fluxes from air-conditioning, solar loading, infiltration, and deliberate venting through the enclosure top vent are included along with equipment heat sources. In the nighttime convective heat fluxes through the open aperture and vent doors, as well as radiation to the sky are tracked along with the nighttime residual heat dissipations after cooling from equipment in the observatory. The diurnal variation of thermal inertia of large masses, such as the telescope structure, is also included. Model results as well as the overall heat balance and thermal management strategy of the observatory are presented.