Control Strategy and Optimization of Available Heat Sinks within Aircraft Thermal Management Systems for Maximizing Mission Life

With the reduced emphasis on ram-air and the disadvantages of using engine fan-bypass air as heat sinks, onboard fuel has become increasingly popular to deposit waste heat. However, with advanced aircraft, such as the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF), replacing traditional hydraulic-, mechanical-, and pneumatic-powered systems with high-powered electrical systems, the waste heat load can exceed the thermal capacitance of fuel being transported from the tanks to the main-engine combustor during low-thrust operational. Thus the fuel is recirculated to the tanks, lowering the remaining thermal capacity. The goal of the SBIR effort is to demonstrate a user-friendly interface and control software that monitors the remaining heat capacity of the onboard fuel. Mainstream"s approach will yield a software and hardware suite capable of not only monitoring the available thermal capacity of the fuel, but optimizing the utilization of on-board heat sinks (fuel and fan-bypass air for the JSF thermal management system). The Phase I effort will focus on the development of the control architecture and optimization strategy while demonstrating performance using operational mission profiles. The Phase II will focus on the user interface and demonstration of the integrated software and hardware with an experimental TMS representative of the JSF TMS.