Thermal analysis of the 6U CubeSat Velox-II

• Main Author: Ranjana Shivakumar
• Other Authors: Sunil Chandrakant Joshi
• Format: Theses and Dissertations
• Language: English
• Published: 2015
• Subjects: DRNTU::Engineering::Aeronautical engineering
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/64807
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Development and experimentation of small satellites have become feasible with the advancements in technologies in aerospace industries. The satellites are subjected to various types of thermal loads or radiative loads while in orbit. Every component of the spacecraft has its own temperature limitations and the temperature of the each component has to be within these limits to avoid reduced efficiency or permanent damage while in orbit. Thus extensive modelling and simulation of satellite's behaviour in space environment helps to reduce the risk and reliability concern. Velox-II is a 6U Nano-Satellite designed for carrying the communication payload and it also has an advanced navigation system. In the present work the thermal . analysis of Velox-II is carried out by ESATAN-TMS software. The simplified thermal model is built using ESATAN-TMS Workbench, in which a geometric mathematical model is built to calculate the radiative coupling between the model nodes followed by thermal mathematical model to calculate the temperature at specific points. A near equatorial orbit and sub-systems design (i.e. the power output) parameters are used as the inputs to determine the temperature profile at concerned locations such as battery, MCU, solar panels etc. The results obtained are post-processed using ThermNV. The internal components are all within the acceptable temperature range except for the battery. The minimum temperature of battery is below the qualification range. In addition, the external components such as helical antenna, and the solar panels facing the sun suffer over heating during sunlight phase.