Cabin environment simulation chamber

Cabin environment simulation chamber

Having sent a probe to the moon that detected evidence of water on the lunar surface for the first time, scores of successful launch of satellites for itself and nearly dozen other countries, India is planning a rover mission to the moon and a spaceship to Mars will be a huge step for India in the area of science and technology”. It requires a ground based test facilities in par with international standards and to ensure the successful operations. Cabin environment chamber is one such ground based facility to simulate the space environmental conditions to test and ensure the space hardware and sub-system survival when the space equipment is exposed the extreme environmental conditions throughout its working life.

Recently, Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre (VSSC) has placed an order on HHV to design, develop and realize an Environment Simulation chamber (ESC) to carryout functional evaluation of space oriented modules. HHV is a unique Indian company which has been designing, developing and commissioning variety of technologically advanced ground based test facilities for space mission for last three and a half to four decades.

HHV has designed, fabricated the ESC and demonstrated the optimized testing efficiency for pressure, humidity, temperature with various accessories which are required for generate the environment condition inside the chamber. The accessories includes sensors, monitoring systems, PC based feedback control system, display system and data acquisition system to control the function of the accessories. Cabin environment simulation system The ESC is a horizontally mounted cylindrical chamber of 2100mm diameter and 2000mm cylindrical length with two tori-spherical dome enclosures – with opening at one end. It has been designed for maintaining internal vacuum level of 10-2 m.bar and insulated on the outside surface temperature within 40 deg C when the internal maximum temperature is at 100 deg C It has been provided with mechanical pumps to maintain any pressure level between 1.3 mbar to 1200 mbar inside the CES chamber and is maintained and regulated by the control valves, gauge sensors and a capacitance gauges. The prescribed pressure versus other parameters of the simulation can be set by PLC, PC controlled data acquisition system.

A temperature and humidity control system maintains the temperature range inside the simulation chamber from 10 to 80 deg C and humidity level 30 to 90% RH. A gas supply system with two stage regulator with flow meter helps to simulate CO2 concentration inside the simulation chamber from 0.5 to1.5 m.bar. An ancillary chamber of size 300mm diameter and 300mm (L) is placed inside the CES on a trolley. It has been designed for an operating pressure of maximum 3 bar, operating temperature 10 to 80 deg C and to simulate the volume of 20 liters with a provision for mounting pressure regulator. It is to be used for the functional evaluation of suit circuit system. Meaning to test the human with space suit connected to the ancillary chamber for various parameters.

The temperature range of air 10 to 80 deg C inside the chamber is maintained by means of hot and cold water circulation bath and a refrigeration system. And the humidity level 30 to 90% RH is maintained inside the chamber by injecting water vapor from low pressure vaporizer. A microprocessor based programmer indicates, controls the temperature and humidity in percentage.

As a pioneering company, HHV will continue to be partner with space organization and support in implementation of national space mission projects to make Indian future space mission successful.