Abstract
The thermal balance test in vacuum chamber for satellite structures is an essential step in the process of satellite development. However, it is technically and economically difficult to fully replicate the space environment by using the vacuum chamber. To overcome these limitations, the thermal analysis through a computer simulation technique has been conducted. The CFRP composite material has attracted attention as satellite structures since it has advantages of excellent mechanical properties and light weight. However, the nonuniform nature of the thermal conductivity of the CFRP structure should be noted at the step of thermal analysis of the satellite. Two different approaches are studied for the thermal analyses; a detailed numerical modeling and a simplified model expressed by an effective thermal conductivity. In this paper, the effective thermal conductivities of the CFRP composite structures are extracted from the detailed numerical results to provide a practical thermal design data for the satellite fabricated with the CFRP composite structure. Calculation results of the surface temperature and the thermal conductivities along x, y, z directions show fairly good agreements between the detailed modeling and the simplified model for all the cases studied here.
