• analysis
• code
• computation
• field
• satellite
• spacecraft
• temperature
• Thermal

This work is the result of an 8-month cooperation between the author and IDS S.p.A. Company, which is headquartered in Pisa with offices in six countries (Italy, UK, Brazil, Canada, USA and Australia). It is intended to be a preliminary model for thermal analysis of spacecraft, with particular attention to Earth-orbiting satellites. Despite the didactic nature of the project, the approach is as general as possible, in order to put the basis for an extension to a more detailed software starting from this prototype code.
Chapter 1 is introductory and explores the motivations of the work, starting with a presentation of the state-of-the-art of thermal analysis. It also shows how some choices in the global structure of the work have been conditioned by imposed constraints. Chapter 2 gives a brief theoretical overview on heat transfer mechanisms, highlighting the importance of radiation in space. The rest of the work is devoted to technical aspects: Chapters 3 and 4 discuss the “boundary conditions” of the thermal problem, for which large part of the time has been spent, while Chapter 5 explains how to pre-process a given geometric model of satellite with the available IT tools. It also introduces a reference architecture for a satellite in order to show the main features of the thermal code. All these topics condense in Chapters 6 and 7, where the thermal network is illustrated, tested and finally validated.
The geometric models of spacecraft architectures have been obtained by means of CATIA® V5R18 software, while Matlab® R2013a has been employed for programming and plotting results. A Matlab® script called Orbit3D.m, available on the MathWorks® website, has revealed itself a precious tool for Keplerian orbit 3D visualization. Moreover, two IDS property tools have been made available: the Mesher, for generating meshes of geometrical models, and the View-Factor Solver for evaluating geometric view factors between discretized surfaces. Final visualization of the results has been performed with MeshLab, an open-source software developed at the Computer Science Department of the University of Pisa.
The work has been supervised by the tutor Prof. Ing. L. d’Agostino of the University of Pisa, together with Ing. G. De Mauro and Ing. G. Ferrandu of IDS Electromagnetic System Design and Laboratory Framework.