Validation of Modified Wine-Rack Thermal Design for Nickel-Hydrogen Batteries in Landsat-7 Spacecraft Thermal Vacuum Test and in Flight

A heritage wine-rack thermal/mechanical design for the nickel-hydrogen batteries was the baseline at the Landsat-7 Preliminary Design Review. An integrated thermal and power analysis of the batteries performed by the author in 1994 revealed that the maximum cell-to-cell gradient was 6.6 C. The author proposed modifying the heritage wine-rack design by enhancing heat conduction from cells to cells, and from cells to battery frame. At the 1995 Intersociety Energy Conversion Engineering Conference (IECEC), the author presented a paper on methods of modifying the wine-rack design. It showed that the modified wine-rack option, which uses a metallic filler, could reduce the maximum cell-to-cell temperature gradient to 1.30 C, and could also reduce the maximum cell temperature by as much as 80 C. That design concept was adopted by the Landsat7 Project Office, and a design change was made at the Critical Design Review. Results of the spacecraft thermal vacuum and thermal balance tests, and temperature data in flight show that the temperatures of the battery cells are very uniform. The maximum cell-to-cell gradient is 1.50 C. They validate the modified wine-rack thermal design.