Spacecraft Harness Evaluator (SHARE) a New Software Tool for Thermal Analysis of Spacecraft Harnesses

Date

2022-07-10

Journal Title

Journal ISSN

Volume Title

Publisher

51st International Conference on Environmental Systems

Abstract

Harness sizing for space applications is driven by derating rules. The respective derating standards are known to be rather conservative, resulting in significant design margins and thus unnecessarily increasing harness mass. A recent ESA study, conducted by the Royal Netherlands Aerospace Centre (NLR) and Airbus DS (France), aimed at reassessing existing derating rules, supported by extensive testing and analysis, and ultimately led to an update of the ECSS-Q-ST-30-11C standard to Rev2, relevant for a wide range of European space projects. The update resulted in a significant reduction of the uncertainty margins and encourages the use of validated thermal simulation tools to further optimize harness designs. As of today, no such simulation tool, specifically validated for harnesses in space applications is commercially available to the European space industry.
This paper describes the validation of the Spacecraft HARness Evaluator (SHARE), a new tool that performs thermal analysis and enables mass optimization of spacecraft harnesses. The validation of SHARE and its underlying thermal model is performed via correlation and verification using an extensive set of measurement data, consisting of 417 single wire and 117 cable bundle test cases, collected during thermal-vacuum testing in the frame of the before mentioned ESA study. The correlation is performed by means of Black-Box optimization to determine �optimal values�, for the emissivity, the bundle-to-enclosure radiative scaling factor and the wire-to-wire contact conductance. It is concluded, that SHARE is able to predict the maximum temperature in a given wire bundle in the defined validation range with an accuracy of -9.5�C / +9.8�C in 95% of all cases. It is foreseen to further improve SHARE by enhancing the accuracy and the validation range through model extensions and additional thermal test campaigns. Future updates of SHARE may include shielding, solar flux consideration and convective analysis in various atmospheres, covering planetary exploration.

Description

Edwin Bloem, Royal Netherlands Aerospace Centre NLR, NL
Roel van Benthem, Royal Netherlands Aerospace Centre NLR, NL
Johannes van Es, Royal Netherlands Aerospace Centre NLR, NL
Robert Kroll, European Space Agency, NL
ICES207: Thermal and Environmental Control Engineering Analysis and Software
The 51st International Conference on Environmental Systems was held in Saint Paul, Minnesota, US, on 10 July 2022 through 14 July 2022.

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Keywords

Thermal Analysis, Space Harness, Evaluation Tool

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