Advances in Thermal Modeling and Analysis of Satellites

Abstract

There has been increasing interest in satellite design and manufacture. Satellites require complex components that must withstand severe mechanical and thermal conditions. Thermal design of a satellite relies on several dynamic factors. Satellites experience both extreme temperatures and rapid temperature changes. This situation induces high thermal stresses and may damage components of satellites on-board. In order to build a safely operating satellite for space conditions, this is to be modeled, simulated and tested accurately for several scenarios. Analytical approaches are established to perform thermal analysis in the early stage of satellite technology. Various methods are applied to solve heat balance equations analytically. Though the efforts provide good approximation, more detailed studies are required to perform multi-objective evaluations to determine the optimal design parameters. Numerical procedures play a crucial role for thermal modeling. Commercial software and built-in tools are useful in solving of heat balance equations numerically for achieving temperature distribution of complex and detailed structures. Besides, numerical procedures increase the accuracy and enable flexibility to designers. However, they have drawbacks on excessive calculation times. This paper focuses on available concepts in thermal modeling and analysis of satellites and to demonstrate recent trends in thermal design of satellites. The motivation of this study is to arouse the researchers to pay attention to the basic understanding for the thermal modeling and analysis of satellites under space conditions. In this review, we present useful knowledge about the novel trends and further studies to design, model and analyze the space satellites.