Thermal Analysis

SC Solutions staff has world class capabilities in modeling and analyzing thermal systems, as well as creating advanced controls engineering solutions for them. Our staff have decades of experience designing and analyzing complex, thermally significant components such as space borne solar arrays, cryostats, electronics boxes, propulsion systems, and imaging payloads. Additionally, SC staff have expertise in aerothermal heating and electromagnetic effects for atmospheric re-entry at hypersonic speeds.

Our analysts solve thermal problems using tools such as Thermal Desktop, or CFD packages, like Star-CCM+ and Fluent. SC Solutions customizes software to sort through and select critical cases from thousands of runs. The resulting temperature fields can be mapped to structural FEMs for thermal distortion analysis and evaluating stresses using solvers such as NASTRAN, ANSYS, and ABAQUS. Optical performance and pointing error can be examined using SigFit^TM or custom SC Solutions software.

Terrestrial and Spaceborne Electronics and Systems

• Steady state & transient
• Chip-level temperature predictions and component heat management
• Enclosures
• Multi-phase systems
• Design of passive and active thermal control systems
  • Natural & forced convection
  • Radiator sizing
  • Heat pipes

On-Orbit Thermal

• External and internal radiation interactions, including orbital heating
• Full spacecraft system-level as well as detailed component-level modeling
• Component experience includes:
  • Solar arrays
  • Propulsion and fuel systems
  • Composite structures and reflectors
  • Imaging payloads
  • Batteries

STOP Analysis

• Modeling the interactions between structural, thermal, and optical performance
• Custom software to down select worst-case thermal cases
• Mapping of results to Structural Finite Element Model
• Structural analysis to determine distortion and stress
• Pointing error for optical components calculated with tools such as SigFit^TM

Aerodynamics & Aero-Heating

• Doctorate-level research
• Flow interactions
  • Hypersonic re-entry aerothermal
  • Multi-species flow
  • Transport properties
• Chemical interactions
  • Chemical non-equilibrium
  • Catalytic effects at surfaces
• Electromagnetic interactions
  • Charge separation
  • Self-induced electromagnetic fields
• Ablatives

Software Tools

• Thermal Desktop (SINDA/FLUINT)
  • Full-purpose code, Spacecraft on-orbit thermal, radiation modeling
• STAR-CCM+/ ANSYS FLUENT
  • Complex thermal/CFD problems, multi-physics, aero-heating
• Nastran, Abaqus, & ANSYS
  • Thermal distortion, heat transfer problems