Study on the application of a realtime simulator to the development of a controller for a space thermal environment chamber

실시간 플랜트 시뮬레이터를 이용한 우주 열환경 챔버 제어기 개발에 관한 연구

A thermal vacuum chamber is mainly used to simulate thermal environments of a test satellite in satellite orbits in which daily temperature variations range from 80K to above 400K depending on solar radiation under the vacuum below $10^{-4}$ torr. The test facility is quite complex and consists of expensive parts. So any modification of control software is discouraged in fear of unexpected system failure. The purpose of this study is to develop a realtime dynamics model of the thermal vacuum chamber in view of controller design and simulate its electrical inputs and outputs for interface with a PLC (programmable logic controller). A PLC program that was used in the thermal vacuum chamber is applied to the realtime simulator. The realized simulator dynamics is found to be quite similar to that of the thermal vacuum chamber and serve to an appropriate plant to verify the control performance of a programmed PLC.