Nanosatellite case study: Issue of heat dissipation across passive thermal analysis

Abstract

One of the major reasons, why nanosatellites are still in a state of vulnerability, is the increase of their thermal temperature, which in many cases leads to the failure of the missions they were originally designed for. In order to maintain the quality of the thermal management system, while keeping the electronic equipment in reliable working conditions. This paper presents a research on the thermal environment and the passive thermal control systems (PTC) of nanosatellites, based on a CFD computational fluid dynamics tool. The idea of this work is to provide a PTC to nanosatellites at a specific altitude in low earth orbit in order to determine their temperature values. From the results collected, the temperatures of the nanosatellites change drastically depending on the presence or absence of heat dissipation. This also depends on the type of the considered coating. It was also noticed that the temperature inclined with the choice of surface coating which was stipulated by the α/ε ratio. Therefore, it would be wise to choose the right surface coating at the very beginning of the design.

Keywords

• radiation heat transfer
• nanosatellite
• heat dissipation
• passive thermal analysis
• optical
• coatings