Design and calibration of a novel transient radiative heat flux meter for a spacecraft thermal test.

Radiative heat flux measurement is significantly important for a spacecraft thermal test. To satisfy the requirements of both high accuracy and fast response, a novel transient radiative heat flux meter was developed. Its thermal receiver consists of a central thermal receiver and two thermal guarded annular plates, which ensure the temperature distribution of the central thermal receiver to be uniform enough for reasonably applying lumped heat capacity method in a transient radiative heat flux measurement. This novel transient radiative heat flux meter design can also take accurate measurements regardless of spacecraft surface temperature and incident radiation spectrum. The measurement principle was elaborated and the coefficients were calibrated. Experimental results from testing a blackbody furnace and an Xenon lamp show that this novel transient radiative heat flux meter can be used to measure transient radiative heat flux up to 1400 W/m(2) with high accuracy and the response time of less than 10 s.