A rigorous study of physical phenomena that characterize the energy transfer in a radiative panel, presents serious problems when, aiming at optimizing feasible design solutions, is oriented to the prognostic evaluation of the overall system performance.
Different thermal interaction modes among constitutive components (i.e. headers, tubes, fins, honeycombs) and an intrinsically complex geometry make extremely cumbersome, if not impossible, to operate with a mathematical model featuring infinite degrees of freedom, as is the case for the real system. The need thus arises to build up a model possessing limited degrees of freedom, capable of approximately portraying, yet with specifiable accuracy, the bulk of physical phenomena that actually evolve in the heat rejection system.
In the given frame this work elucidates how the objective may be attained by utilizing the finite element method and how it is also possible to deal with non-linearities stemming from existing boundary conditions.