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Description
Thermal management on Mars poses significant challenges due to its rarefied atmosphere, where the low ambient pressure severely limits the effectiveness of convective heat transfer. This study investigates the feasibility and optimization of convective cooling strategies for a Mars flight vehicle, using NASA's Ingenuity Mars Helicopter as a case study. Particular emphasis is given to the thermal control of the motor and electronics enclosure, two components highly sensitive to overheating during flight.
Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations in Ansys Fluent were employed to analyze the local flowfield around the helicopter and identify optimal cooler placement. Subsequently, an adjoint-based solver was used to perform shape optimization, refining the cooler geometry to maximize convective heat dissipation under Martian atmospheric conditions.
The optimized configurations show significant improvements in thermal performance, successfully maintaining critical component temperatures within operational limits during simulated flight profiles. Importantly, the results indicate that enhanced cooling can enable longer flight durations or increased payload capacity, even when accounting for the additional mass of the cooling system.
This work demonstrates that convective cooling can be both effective and practical. These findings provide valuable insights for the design of thermal control systems in future planetary aerial vehicles operating in low-density atmospheres.
