Speakers
Description
The spacecraft design activity usually involves the collaboration of many different teams with various process, methods and tools. Despite the universality of thermal data (temperatures, fluxes, …), every thermal analysis software have their own specificities, which makes the exchange of thermal data often challenging.
Besides data format standardization initiatives (ECSS, STEP-TAS, …), other approaches can be investigated to facilitate the exchanges between thermal engineers. The “Efficient Integration of Space Thermal Analysis Model” project, conducted by ESA along with Airbus DS, Epsyl and Ariane Group, aimed to identify and test innovative solutions to tackle this type of situation.
A survey was sent to 38 space actors, including spacecraft, subs-systems and launcher manufacturers from 15 different countries, to identify user requirements. The analysis of these requirements has led to the selection of the FMI co-simulation solution. The Functional Mock-up Interface (FMI) is a free standard that defines a container and an interface to exchange dynamic simulation models as FMU (Functional Mockup Units). This standard is commonly used across several industries to perform co-simulation, regardless of discrepancies in software and physics at stake.
A preliminary implementation of Systema FMU wrapping combined with a co-simulation solution developed by Epsyl enabled the demonstration of the feasibility (TRL3) of performing thermal to thermal co-simulation through FMI. The numerical accuracy of the co-simulation was assessed by basic theoretical cases while the interest of the solution was evaluated through a set of industrial cases including satellite-launcher coupling and satellite sub-systems integration.
This presentation comprises a summary of the achievements, challenges and lessons learned of FMI-based thermal data exchanges as well as discussions on way forwards for future developments.
