Satellites are typically subjected to large temperature variations due to its orbit, whereas some satellite's equipment sharp temperature limits must be observed in order not to jeopardize satellite's mission. Designed to operate in passive satellites' thermal control, space radiators can be a valuable asset, rejecting heat generated by electronic components and minimizing absorption of heat from external sources (especially the Sun). The present work presents a numerical methodology for performing the analysis of space radiators, and a comparison between a plane radiator and finned radiator in critical operating conditions is presented. The governing equations have been discretized in a two-dimensional grid using a finite volume scheme and the resulting system was solved using Thomas Algorithm in an iterative process, concatenated in two algorithms. The results obtained show the temperature profiles for both radiators studied and a performance analysis is performed, showing the best geometrical configuration for the finned radiator.
A nearly-orthogonal boundary-conforming grid generation technique based upon inhomogeneous elliptic partial differential equations is presented. The method has been designed to generate grids for multiply-connected domains in a block-structure fashion. It also allows for control of point distribution along boundaries, as well as control of grid spacing inside the domain by using a slightly modified version of the renowned Thompson's control functions, which is reported to work well. Although not fully-automatic, the process is automatized in order to make it more usable and speed-up computational time, which is usually a demotivating factor in elliptic grid generation techniques. This is also the reason why the implementation has been performed in an objected-oriented fashion using C++ and as relaxation method the Alternating Direction Implicit (ADI) with-sequence, generating appealing results. The method presented can be fully extended to 3D. Some results are presented and discussed.
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