Space Station Freedom Thermal Modeling Using the IDEAS2 TRASYS Interface

The thermal control system of Space Station Freedom presents special challenges for the development of advanced design/analysis methodologies. The construction of Space Station Freedom spans twenty nine distinct stages, each of which must act as an independent spacecraft between rendezvous with the space transportation system. A tool which allows the thermal analyst to build up-to-date thermal models of each stage quickly and effectively is necessary for the engineering and integration of Space Station Freedom. To meet this requirement, an interface has been developed between IDEAS², a spacecraft solid modeling and analysis package, and TRASYS, a thermal radiation modeling code.

This paper presents an overview of the IDEAS² TRASYS interface and how it is being used to analyze early flight thermal control issues on Space Station Freedom. The IDEAS² TRASYS interface is particularly useful for generating the many thermal radiation math models which are required to assess alternative spacecraft configurations and the multiple stages of the assembly sequence. The interface enables the thermal geometric data to be generated from a common solid modeling database which is also used to supply geometric information for structural and flight mechanics analysis. The interface makes extensive use of interactive graphics to streamline the process of creating, checking, and using TRASYS models.

Two sample applications of the IDEAS² TRASYS interface involving the IEA battery temperature study on Flight 1 and the module cluster study on Flight 28 are described in this paper.