Montreal Space Symposium

In the spacecraft industry, strong coupling between thermal and structural analysis is critical to the success of the mission. Antennas and cameras are particularly affected by thermal distortion. Maya Heat Thermal Transfer has recently been involved in various projects where accuracy was of paramount importance, e.g. the cameras on the ESA ExoMars rover where thermal distortion means that the two lenses can point in slightly different directions, or the star camera of a satellite.
 
Due to the complexity of the spacecraft models, detailed thermal analyses are usually performed to determine temperature profiles and gradients, followed by structural analyses. This involves a lot of manual and tedious non-recurring mapping work.
 
In this presentation, the High Energy Solar Spectroscopic Imager (HESSI) spacecraft will be used as an example to illustrate a fully integrated multi-physics approach. This minimizes the risk of errors, speeds up considerably the analyses, and allows engineers to focus on the design.