Satellite orbiting the earth

Satellite orbiting the earth

Satellites that orbit the earth experience very complex thermal boundary conditions. Solar heating, radiation to deep space and albedo from earth all change with time.

The satellite may be rotating on its axis making the heat loading even more complex.

Solaria has an interface with TRASYS and TSS. These tools are used to predict these effects on an orbiting satellite.

The model can be built in Solaria, surface information exported to TRASYS where the orbit is defined. When TRASYS is run a BCD file is created that can be then read into Solaria. From reading the BCD file, surface time dependent heat loads are generated, radiation to space is generated as well as radiation between the different surfaces of the satellite.

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The geometry of the satellite is first generated in Solaria. Next Radiating Surfaces are defined. These are surfaces you want to be exported to TRASYS. The surface emissivity and absorptivity is defined in Solaria. A ready to run TRASYS input file is then exported. If you want to run an orbit simulation then the orbit definition must be added to the input file. TRASYS is then run.

336 surface-to-surface radiation elements, 104 node-to-surface radiation elements to space and 104 time dependent heat fluxes were generated. All that is left is to do is to solve the model for temperatures.

An example of the time dependent heat load imported from TRASYS. Notice that the time dependency is defined as periodic. This means we can run the model for multiple orbits and the heat load will simply repeat.

Transient results of three points on the model for six orbits.