THERMAL ANALYSIS UNDER OPERATING CONDITION OF A HYDROGEN PEROXIDE PROPULSIVE SYSTEM FOR CUBESATS

The CubeSat’s design of the satellite’s current and future generation will take advantages from a suitable green propellant propulsive system to achieve several orbital manoeuvres. The development of the such device involves a complete thermal analysis considering both continuous and pulsed firing modes. The objective is to check if the temperatures of the components of the propulsive system satisfy the requirements during and after the firing periods. A first tentative approach to achieve this goal is using a lumped parameter model which can provide results in very short times, evaluating the conductive, convective and radiative contribution to the system’s thermal exchange. The model, however, firstly requires a validation which has been done by comparing the results with the ones obtained using a finite element method analysis (FEM). The validation has only considered the conductive and radiative contribution. The effectiveness of the developed lumped parameter method has been confirmed by means of the comparison between the results of the two methods.