Xiaomin Chen

Utilization of a COTS component in temperature measurement system for microgravity fluid experiment on SZ‐4 spaceship

Purpose – This paper presents a new multi‐channel temperature measurement system (MCTMS) with small size, light weight and low power consumption for the microgravity fluid experiment of drop Marangoni migration on SZ‐4 spaceship, a test module of the manned space mission of China.Design/methodology/approach – The MCTMS, with a commercial‐off‐the‐shelf (COTS) component monolithic thermocouple amplifier with cold junction compensation AD595, is designed to measure temperature gradient field of up to 6 type T thermocouples Cu‐Constantan for microgravity fluid experiment. Through an analog multiplexer, the very small signal amplitude of the six‐channel temperatures can be acquired and amplified by the same monolithic thermocouple amplifier to retain the consistency of the six channels. A fully mission analysis and evaluation on the COTS component was taken into account before it was used in the thermal and radiation environment of space.Findings – Using the COTS component in space can increase the system perf...