Automation techniques for thermal analysis of spacecraft systems

Abstract

The evaluation of the design and performance of current and future hypersonic flight vehicles, including the Shuttle Orbiter, National Aerospace Plane (NASP), and assured crew return vehicle (ACRV), requires rigorous and very extensive thermal analyses. These analyses are imperative to ensure that the design of spacecraft systems is adequate and that safety margins are proper for given mission requirements. Conventionally, thermal analyses have been performed manually, that is, without the aid of integrated automatic procedures for constructing nodalized thermal models, incorporating initial and boundary conditions, and performing other necessary modifications. These manual processes require considerable manpower that could be utilized for other tasks. In order to improve these time-consuming and tedious analysis procedures, an engineering concept and methodology for automating thermal analysis has been developed and implemented for the thermal analysis of the Space Shuttle Orbiter. This paper discusses this new methodology.