Experimental and Numerical Investigation of Transverse Thermal Conductivity of an Aluminum Honeycomb Panel

Abstract

Transverse thermal conductivity of an aluminum honeycomb panel is evaluated by experimental, analytical and computational approaches. The main objective of this work is to investigate the best thermal modeling of a honeycomb panel for a satellite. The test was conducted in a thermal vacuum chamber and the numerical results were obtained by Thermal Desktop®, RadCAD® and SINDA/FLUINT thermal analyzer. Numerical results and analytical models were compared to experimental data, in order to validate the numerical model and evaluate the more appropriated analytical model. The panel was modeled as an element with effective thermal conductivities in each direction, and two nodal division approaches were investigated: centered nodes and edge nodes configurations. Analytical models have shown a good agreement with experimental data. The analytical model (of the transverse thermal conductivity of the aluminum honeycomb panel) based on the density and thermal conductivity of core’s material presents just a slight deviation compared to experimental results. Regarding to numerical analyses, the results have shown that the analysis method as well as nodal breakdown are extremely important to reach acceptable results, and the edge nodes configuration has presented low computational cost, since a smaller amount of nodes is required to achieve temperature convergence, compared to centered nodes configuration