Simulation of the Temperature and Humidity Control System of International Space Station in the Virtual Habitat

Abstract

The Virtual Habitat (V-HAB) is a Life Support System (LSS) simulation tool, created to provide enable dynamic simulations of LSS for human space flight missions. V-HAB creates the possibility for a dynamic simulation of different LSS architectures for an entire mission scenario including transfers between mission phases. It allows access to such characteristics of the LSS as stability and controllability. V-HAB is positioned as an engineering support tool for early design phases, allowing the user to test and optimize the LSS for different mission scenarios including emergency situations. Furthermore, in the future V-HAB could find an application as a mission shadowing tool predicting the LSS behavior during different events. One of the important parameters needed to be controlled by LSS in habitats is the temperature. Performance of the crew, growth rate of the plants and performance of some LSS technologies depend directly on the temperature conditions. As a consequence the temperature fluctuations in the system must be represented in V-HAB. This paper presents the development status of the thermal modeling approach and of the solver algorithms in VHAB. The development is performed based on the International Space Station (ISS) Temperature and Humidity Control System, allowing direct comparison with real data and correlation of the models based on the best possible role model of an LSS available. The thermal module uses a simultaneous solution method instead of the iterative method used in the rest of V-HAB. The simultaneous solution approach will be evaluated for future implementation in the rest of the V-HAB tool.