Experimental Study on the Cooling Characteristics of an Environmental Control System for Avionic Reconnaissance Equipment

Environmental control system is adopted to control the thermal load from the avionic equipment in the reconnaissance pod which is mounted under a fighter aircraft, undergoing large and rapid environmental changes with the variations of flight altitude and velocity. In this study, an environmental control system was designed and built by adopting vapor compression cycle using R-124. The cooling performance characteristics of the system were measured varying operating parameters: thermal load in the pod, air mass flow rate through evaporator, condenser inlet air temperature, and air mass flow rate through condenser. The effects of the experimental parameters on the system performance were analyzed based on the experimental results. The problems on the designed system were also analyzed and the solutions were suggested to improve system efficiency and to obtain stable operation.