Development of micro-gravity material processing furnace

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Advanced utilization of solar energy will be an important technology for future space development. A solar concentrating system coupled with optical fibers was designed for high temperature material processing in space. Cassegrainian optics were used for the first-stage solar concentrator in order to fit the rim angle with the maximum angle for optical fibers used in this experiment. The strongly diverged solar rays at the exit of the optical fiber bundle are reconcentrated by Compound Parabolic Concentrators (CPCs). Using the system we can obtain the spatially fixed and stable high temperature point because of the flexibility of the optical fiber bundle. Its concentration ratio was measured for evaluate the optical performance of the CPC. It was revealed that the experimental value was nearly equal to the theoretical one. For simulating the space experiment on lunar surface, the temperature distributions in lunar regolith was analyzed by the finite element method coupled with raytracing method. It is shown that the CPC is useful to obtaining the high temperature for material processing on lunar surface.