a b s t r a c tIn this paper, we present the process and the results of the thermal analysis applied to a nanosatellite developed at Politecnico di Torino. First, main mission parameters and the spacecraft design are presented, in order to fix the boundary conditions and the thermal environment used for the analysis. Then, the thermal model built to solve the thermal balance problem is described into details, and the numerical simulation code is presented. Finally, results are given and discussed in depth. The tool developed provides excellent modelling capabilities and temperature distributions have been validated through commercial software.The analysis has been used to refine the spacecraft configuration and to set the requirements applicable to the thermal control system of the satellite. The results showed that a basically passive control is sufficient to maintain most spacecraft's components within their temperature range when appropriate thermal coatings and/or tapes are provided. However, heaters to warm up batteries are recommended to survive coldest conditions.

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the system requirements, the conceptual design process evolves through the system architecture and the mission definition. The system architecture definition consists of the two main tasks: Functional Analysis and System Sizing.

The present work provides a method for maintenance cost estimation for a civil aircraft. The model evaluates maintenance costs at a subsystem level in order to quantify the effective impact of each aircraft part on the total maintenance cost. An analysis at the subsystem level can offer a more precise cost estimation because the most influential parameters (that is, the cost drivers) should be different for each aircraft part. Emphasis is given on the updating of a cost-estimating model proposed in 1966 that provided equations for the maintenance cost assessment at a subsystem level using the Air Transport Association nomenclature. The reference method is enhanced with additional cost items, and the choice of cost drivers is accurately considered. The application of the developed model shows good accordance with the reference values provided by the International Air Transport Association, and results are compared with the common state-of-the-art methods.

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