Development of the Next Generation of Thermal Analysis Tool

ESATAN, a thermal network solver, and ESARAD, a radiative analysis preprocessor, are now used widely throughout the European community for performing satellite thermal analysis. Although these serve the community well it is time to look ahead at the next generation of thermal analysis tool. This paper addresses the problems inherent in the present thermal analysis tools and proposes a specification of a new tool to be developed over the next four years.

The major aims of the proposed tool are to provide; complete node and conductor generation, integration of the radiative and thermal analysis processes, a simple interface to other analysis disciplines and a complete and intuitive graphical user interface.