Thermal parameters identification in the correlation of spacecraft thermal models against thermal test results

Influence of the Measurements Uncertainties in the Correlation of Spacecraft Thermal Models against Thermal Results

“…The number of calculations done is very high, therefore, the tables that follow will try to resume the most important points needed to evaluate the correlation process when measurement errors are present. The employed cases will be those presented previously elsewhere (see references [13,14]), to allow the interested reader to have a complete idea of the process of correlation, its possibilities and the difficulties present.…”

“…Previous works by the authors have shown the possibility of doing an adequate correlation of thermal parameters, both in the steady state and transient situations, for small size TMMs using minimization algorithms [13,14]. These works were developed using the same three small TMMs used in the work presented hereafter, composed by 4 nodes, 7 nodes and 16 nodes, respectively.…”

“…The transient case extends 7200 s (2 h), and the initial temperature for all the nodes is 20 • C. The time step used is 600 s (10 min). The behavior and correlation of this model was studied in depth in references [13,14], which can be consulted for more detailed information. Now, different error levels have been introduced for the reference temperatures, as can be seen in the different values assigned to the standard deviation (SD) in the tables included in next sections.…”

“…That is, different combinations of the TMM parameters could provide the correct temperatures, being the main risk, the loss of the physical sense due to the values mathematically assigned to these parameters. One option to attenuate this problem is to include several load cases in the correlation as was stated in previous works of the authors [13,14].…”