A COMPLETE METHODOLOGY FOR THE COMPUTATION OF EXTERNAL HEAT FLUXES FOR THE TRANSIENT THERMAL ANALYSIS OF SATELLITES

Abstract

This paper describes a complete methodology for the computation of transient external heat fluxes (i.e. solar, albedo and earth) for a given set of orbital parameters such as altitude, solar constant etc. and orientation of the satellite. A software module based on this methodology was developed and its performance was assessed by comparing its predictions with the ones obtained by a commercial software on the same test problem. Comparisons revealed that the external fluxes can be computed accurately with the developed module. It was then used in conjunction with an in-house thermal analysis code based on Thermal Network Method (TNM) and Monte Carlo Ray Tracing Technique (MCRT) for the transient simulation of the same test problem. It was shown that the temperature predictions obtained by the in-house code and the commercial software were in excellent agreement with each other and the developed software is a reliable, accurate and complete tool that can be used in the thermal analysis of satellites.

Keywords

• Solar heat flux
• Albedo heat flux
• Earth heat flux
• Satellite thermal analysis
• Indirect heat fluxes
• Shadowing effect