Colloquium: Frank Simon Meijering (Space Flight)

The thermal analysis of small satellites (SmallSats) is often given a low priority compared to other sub-systems, due to the short timelines and small budgets associated with SmallSats. However, the satellite's temperature is crucial for preventing mission failures. In this thesis, a new, open-source, modular software for thermal analysis of SmallSats is created with the Python coding language, to simplify and speed up the thermal analysis process. This modularity is achieved by: ensuring that any thermal model can be connected to another thermal model with a single connect function, allowing a hierarchical model that is easily mutable and re-usable; integrating a material database into the software, including numerous materials, coatings, and contact connections; and including a dedicated sensitivity analysis tool in the software. To assess the quality of the software's computations, they were verified with the commercial ESATAN-TMS software, and validated with flight data from the FUNcube-1 CubeSat.

Supervisor: M.S. Uludag