The THERMICA–SINDA/G software system merges the graphical model building, orbital mission planning, radiation and orbital heating, and thermal model creation process into one interactive graphical environment. This environment incorporates THERMICA from Astrium and SINDA/G© from Network Analysis Inc. SINDA/G is transparently integrated into the THERMICA software, with full access to the flexibility of the SINDA/G thermal analysis system from a graphical interface.

SPACECRAFT THERMAL DESIGN PROCESS

The spacecraft thermal design process can be divided into several steps. These steps have been traditionally performed using discrete software packages, each being either text or graphics based. Integration of these packages was left to the thermal engineer. The thermal design of the satellite shown below used 5 different software packages, and created 136 MB of data in 831 files in 86 different directories. While the graphical environment provided useful feedback to the thermal engineer, the process of integrating several packages and managing the data was tedious.

Figure 1 - Case study of a small satellite

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