Doctoral thesis (Dissertations and theses)
Space Thermal Analysis through Reduced Finite Element Modelling
Jacques, Lionel
2016
 

Files


Full Text
PhDThesis_LJacques_2016_12_02.pdf
Author preprint (47.37 MB)
Download

All documents in ORBi are protected by a user license.

Send to



Details



Keywords :
Space; Thermal; Finite Element; Reduction; Monte Carlo ray tracing
Abstract :
[en] The finite element method (FEM) is widely used in mechanical engineering, in particular for structure design. However, it is not often exploited for the thermal analysis of space structures for which the use of the lumped parameter method is still commonplace. To alleviate the computational burden of the FEM for thermal analyses involving conduction and radiation, an innovative global conductive-radiative reduction scheme based on the clustering of the finite element mesh is presented. The proposed method leads to a significant reduction of the number of radiative exchange factors (REFs) to compute and size of the corresponding matrix. It further keeps accurate conduction information by introducing the concept of physically meaningful super nodes associated to the clusters from which are derived the reduced conductive couplings. To complement the reduction of the number of faces, an improved Monte Carlo ray tracing algorithm is developed. It provides better accuracy and convergence rate than the classic Monte Carlo method. The algorithm is adapted to the partitioned FE mesh and includes quadrics fitting for accurate normal representation. The resulting conductive-radiative reduced model is solved using standard iterative techniques and the detailed mesh temperatures, recovered from the super nodes temperatures, can be directly exploited for thermo-mechanical analysis. The proposed global reduction method is validated on several space structures and is benchmarked against ESATAN-TMS, the standard thermal analysis software used in the European aerospace industry.
Research center :
STAR - Space sciences, Technologies and Astrophysics Research - ULiège
Disciplines :
Aerospace & aeronautics engineering
Author, co-author :
Jacques, Lionel  ;  Université de Liège > CSL (Centre Spatial de Liège)
Language :
English
Title :
Space Thermal Analysis through Reduced Finite Element Modelling
Defense date :
02 December 2016
Number of pages :
200
Institution :
ULiège - Université de Liège
Degree :
Doctorat en Sciences de l'Ingénieur
Promotor :
Kerschen, Gaëtan  ;  Université de Liège - ULiège > Aérospatiale et Mécanique (A&M)
Béchet, Eric ;  Université de Liège - ULiège > Aérospatiale et Mécanique (A&M)
President :
Rochus, Pierre  ;  Université de Liège - ULiège > Département d'aérospatiale et mécanique
Jury member :
Embrechts, Jean-Jacques ;  Université de Liège - ULiège > Département d'électricité, électronique et informatique (Institut Montefiore)
Bruls, Olivier  ;  Université de Liège - ULiège > Département d'aérospatiale et mécanique
Rooijackers, Harrie
Bialecki, Ryszard
Funders :
F.R.S.-FNRS - Fonds de la Recherche Scientifique [BE]
Available on ORBi :
since 06 December 2016

Statistics


Number of views
326 (53 by ULiège)
Number of downloads
2472 (36 by ULiège)

Bibliography


Similar publications



Contact ORBi