Radiators are passive thermal control systems that are used very commonly on satellites. They allow the heat that comes from the payload equipments to evacuate to space.
In most space missions, satellites must dump waste heat at times, but also preserve that heat at other times. Nowadays, satellites and small satellites require more and more power and must accommodate various mission scenarios with variable heat rejection.
But at the same time, they must limit the increase in energy consumption, which will have the detrimental effect of increasing their mass. Although variable louver radiators have been developed in the past to overcome this problem, they are not often used due to their size and weight, and their sensitivity to the solar position.
Today, most space companies still use both conventional multi-layer insulation (MLI) and radiators. Consequently, there is a growing need to develop smart radiators which can modify the amount of energy evacuated into space as needed, while minimizing the increase in mass.
Smart radiators are the result of a combination of integrated MLI layers which can modify thermal conduction in the thickness as needed and a radiator. Smart radiators use shape metal alloy discrete spacers which allow the separation distance of the integrated MLI layers to be altered, depending on the temperature, which passively control the heat conduction through the radiator. Learn how Modelling MLI ?
Therefore, there is less need to activate heaters during the cold cases, which reduces the power consumption of the satellite and therefore the mass of the battery and solar panels. Furthermore, smart radiators are a lightweight system compared to conventional louvers.
Although CAD softwares offer some capabilities to model MLI, to date there is no standard method to model MLI as well as a library of flown and qualified MLI properties available for the whole space thermal engineers' community.
Benefits: Known approach.
Limitations: Increase power requirements to keep the spacecraft warm in deep space cold environments, heavyweight, and large systems, sensitive to the position of the sun
Making standard smart radiators will reduce the mass budget of the space systems.
We will build the detailed thermal model of the smart radiator and fully parametrise all the geometrical and material properties such as construction points, thermal conductivities, thermo-optical properties, densities, etc. in a way that the same smart radiator thermal model can be quickly reused and adapted to another mission.
Furthermore, we will validate our smart radiator thermal model with the test and flight data, and make it accessible to the entire space thermal engineers’ community via our Digital Engineer® Try it now