Thermal Experiments for Validation of 3-AMADEUS Cubesat

There has been an increasing interest in CubeSats missions due to its small size, low cost and flexibility to accommodate different payloads. It enables CubeSats to perform a range of various missions. One of the causes of failure in a satellite in space are the temperature peaks suffered during a full orbital cycle. Therefore, proper thermal control system design and test should be performed to guarantee the reliability of a spacecraft prior to launch.The present work aims to analyze the main heat transfer processes within a satellite to validate the 3-AMADEUS CubeSat and current methodologies used by CEiiA for nano and micro satellites. Hence, with the purpose of developing thermal models with higher reliability, an experiment was devised to be performed in a controlled environment. The experimental test consists in a study of the heat exchange between two aluminum plates through radiation, using infrared lamps as heat source. Three distance configuration and two lamp types are tested. This would emulate the heat transmission between different components within the satellite. The view factors are changed. In parallel, a finite element software (MSC Nastran) is used to carry out a numerical study of the same experiments. The temperature distribution results of both numerical and experimental solutions are then compared, and the results are discussed. Keywords: Radiation, View factors, Experimenta