Application of Linear Control Methods to Satellite Thermal Analysis

The paper discusses the development of a software tool for transferring the classical thermal network to a standard linear control system, and subsequent solving of this linearized system either in the time domain or in the frequency domain. Application of this type of analysis becomes more and more important for missions, where extremely demanding requirements on geometrical and thus thermo-elastic stability are involved. It allows specific thermal stability analyses w/o running extensive transient thermal analysis. The paper discusses the numerical approach selected, and provides a comparison of the different methods for two application examples, the LISA and the Gaia missions.