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thermal Modelling

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I'm new to COMSOL and I'm trying to model the temperature of a satellite when it becomes in contact with solar radiation. I have been trying to model a cube within a cube where I will use a face of the outer cube to radiate the solar heat flux into a face of the inner cube and determine the temperature. Do you have any suggestions as to how to go about it?

5 Replies Last Post 5 gen 2023, 08:12 GMT-5

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Posted: 1 decade ago 10 lug 2014, 09:45 GMT-4
If you know the percentage of solar radiation that is absorbed by your surface, and the solar radiation power per surface area you can just use a single cube (your satelite), and add a Heat Flux boundary to the face that is irradiated by the sun.
If you know the percentage of solar radiation that is absorbed by your surface, and the solar radiation power per surface area you can just use a single cube (your satelite), and add a Heat Flux boundary to the face that is irradiated by the sun.

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Posted: 1 decade ago 30 lug 2014, 05:56 GMT-4
basically I want to do it with whole satellite which includes all electronics subsystem, its size is about 10x10x10cm small satellite. what is the solar radiation power per surface area?? if you dont mind please explain me
basically I want to do it with whole satellite which includes all electronics subsystem, its size is about 10x10x10cm small satellite. what is the solar radiation power per surface area?? if you dont mind please explain me

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Posted: 1 decade ago 30 lug 2014, 11:10 GMT-4
Light carries a certain amount of energy. If this is absorbed by a surface, this energy is usually transformed into heat. The radiation power per surface area is the amount of energy in the sunlight that strikes a unit surface area per unit time. This power is different for different wavelengths (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunlight#mediaviewer/File:Solar_Spectrum.png). Not all of this power is absorbed by the surface however, actually, most of it is reflected by a lot of metals. The percentage of the power that is reflected also depends on the wavelength (see for example en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reflectivity#mediaviewer/File:Image-Metal-reflectance.png). So if you want to do it correctly you need a graph of the absorbance as a function of wavelength of the material that you are using, and multiply it with the solar spectrum outside the atmosphere, and then integrate over all wavelengths to know the total amount of heat generated per second and per unit surface area of your satellite.
Light carries a certain amount of energy. If this is absorbed by a surface, this energy is usually transformed into heat. The radiation power per surface area is the amount of energy in the sunlight that strikes a unit surface area per unit time. This power is different for different wavelengths (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunlight#mediaviewer/File:Solar_Spectrum.png). Not all of this power is absorbed by the surface however, actually, most of it is reflected by a lot of metals. The percentage of the power that is reflected also depends on the wavelength (see for example http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reflectivity#mediaviewer/File:Image-Metal-reflectance.png). So if you want to do it correctly you need a graph of the absorbance as a function of wavelength of the material that you are using, and multiply it with the solar spectrum outside the atmosphere, and then integrate over all wavelengths to know the total amount of heat generated per second and per unit surface area of your satellite.

Jeff Hiller COMSOL Employee

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Posted: 2 years ago 9 nov 2022, 08:52 GMT-5
Updated: 2 years ago 21 dic 2022, 16:04 GMT-5

One of the major new features of the Heat Transfer Module for version 6.1 is its Orbital Thermal Loads interface for Spacecraft thermal analysis. This blog post presents it in good detail. You will find more information on the Heat Transfer Module at this link.

Best,

Jeff

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Jeff Hiller
One of the major new features of the Heat Transfer Module for version 6.1 is its Orbital Thermal Loads interface for Spacecraft thermal analysis. This [blog post](https://www.comsol.com/blogs/computing-orbital-heat-loads-with-comsol-multiphysics/) presents it in good detail. You will find more information on the Heat Transfer Module at [this link](https://www.comsol.com/release/6.1/heat-transfer-module). Best, Jeff

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Posted: 2 years ago 5 gen 2023, 08:12 GMT-5

Hi, in cubic satellite for every surface(+X,-X vs. ) how we learn absorbed heat flux by COMSOL,

Hi, in cubic satellite for every surface(+X,-X vs. ) how we learn absorbed heat flux by COMSOL,

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