CubeSats, particularly those developed by student teams, often face extremely short development cycles, leading to limited attention to detailed thermal analysis. Accurate thermal modelling is important to ensure the reliable operation of on-board systems. However, professional thermal modelling tools such as ESATAN are complex, and correlation-based validation methods are time-consuming and resource-intensive. Consequently, small satellite teams frequently rely on simplified models with large error margins in temperature predictions.
This paper presents the design of experiments to determine thermo-optical properties for materials commonly used in student CubeSat construction. Additionally, a database is presented that highlights the thermal conductivity, solar absorptivity, heat capacity and infra-red emissivity, obtained from the experiments, for printed circuit boards (PCBs), solar cells and solar panels. Finally, a sensitivity analysis is performed to indicate the effect of the uncertainties in property values on the average battery temperature as it is a thermally critical component.
The design of experiments can be used by student teams to perform their own experiments and the properties obtained in this work can be used for their initial thermal design. This will allow student teams to make better estimates for the thermal budget of their CubeSat missions. ... Read more