Design evolution and verification of the general-purpose heat source

The General-Purpose Heat Source (GPHS) is a radioisotope heat source for use in space power systems. It employs a modular design, to make it adaptable to a wide range of energy conversion systems and power levels. Each 250 W module is completely autonomous, with its own passive safety provisions to prevent fuel release under all abort modes, including atmospheric reentry and earth impact. Prior development tests had demonstrated good impact survival as long as the iridium fuel capsules retained their ductility. This requires high impact temperatures, typically above 900/sup 0/C and reasonably fine grain size, which in turn requires avoidance of excessive operating temperatures and reentry temperatures. These three requirements - on operating, reentry, and impact temperatures - are in mutual conflict, since thermal design changes to improve any one of these temperatures tend to worsen one or both of the others. This conflict creates a difficult design problem, which for a time threatened the success of the program. The present paper describes how this problem was overcome by successive design revisions, supplemented by thermal analyses and confirmatory vibration and impact tests; and how this may be achieved while raising the specific power of the GPHS to 83 W/lb, amore » 50% improvement over previously flown radioisotope heat sources.« less