Simulation of Heat Loads on the Surface of a Spacecraft in a Simulator with Grid Modules.

The results of studies related to the problem of creating an infrared simulator of a multimodule type for modeling heat loads on the surface of a spacecraft during their thermal vacuum testing are presented. It is shown that such a simulator can be created using mesh emitters as modules used in autonomous thermal vacuum tests of individual elements of a spacecraft with predominantly flat outer surfaces. This raises the problem of controlling a multimodule simulator, which consists in the need to determine such a nature of the distribution of electrical power supplied to individual modules, in which the calculated external heat loads on the surface of the test object would be reproduced with the highest possible accuracy for the simulation system under consideration. This problem is solved as an inverse problem of the theory of control of thermal processes. The results of computational experiments indicate the possibility of achieving high accuracy in modeling external heat loads on a spacecraft with a nonconcave outer surface. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]