A Rapid CubeSat Demonstration of an AM Battery Case with Embedded Oscillating Heat Pipes

The CubeSat Technology Exploration Project (CubeSTEP) is developing a test platform for the rapid maturation of emerging spacecraft technologies. This paper presents the development of a CubeSat demonstration for an innovative additively manufactured battery thermal control system using Oscillating Heat Pipes (OHP). This Additively Manufactured (AM) battery case OHP is currently under development at NASA JPL. In an effort to mature this technology, two OHP battery case designs developed by Cal Poly Pomona in collaboration with JPL are presented. These AM OHP battery cases are designed to be integrated and tested onboard the CubeSTEP platform. The spacecraft structure and the OHPs are additively manufactured with metal powder-based fusion techniques using AlSi10Mg. The CubeSat bus and OHPs have been designed for printing to minimize clean-up, powder removal, and post-processing. Our work presents the preliminary design and development of the CubeSTEP platform and the AM OHP battery case. The system design utilizes structural topology optimization and highlights the application of additive manufacturing for rapid prototyping in SmallSat development.