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Description
Data processing capacity and power demand are rapidly increasing in telecom and scientific payloads. Together with system miniaturization, this trend often leads to performance limitations caused by insufficient cooling, which can limit the revenue obtainable from flight equipment. Optimized satellite structures and cooling systems are therefore key enablers for next-generation high-throughput small satellites and future space missions. This work presents the application of topology optimization to the design of an electronics frame for a high-power satellite application. The objective is to obtain a minimum-mass design that withstands demanding mechanical and thermal loads. The concept incorporates embedded heat pipes to improve thermal management through phase-change heat transport, and it is intended for additive manufacturing, allowing agile production of optimized geometries tailored to specific use cases. The Solid Isotropic Material with Penalization (SIMP) method was applied using HyperMesh and OptiStruct. The resulting electronics frame supports a printed circuit board inside a satellite, withstands launch mechanical loads, and dissipates heat generated by the electronic components. An in-house tool was developed to design the heat-pipes, predicting heat transfer and subsequently fed with empirical results (cross sections, filling ratios, heat loads). Current designs can extract up to 75 W locally at component level, translating into a power density of 34 W/cm2. Compared with a conventional frame, the optimized design achieves about 15% mass reduction while the heat-pipe concept reduces critical electronic temperatures by tens of degrees Celsius, increasing the available thermal margin for higher power throughput. Additionally, AIT activities are considerably simplified as externally mounted hardware such as thermal braids or traditional heat pipes are not required.