Thermal Analysis

For the thermal analysis, the power dissipation for each part is computed. The goal of the thermal analysis is to determine how hot each component gets and verify that the computed temperatures meet design requirements. Since space power supplies are required to operate in vacuum conditions, heat removal is limited to conductive cooling and radiation. Practically, radiation is not significant. One of the most useful tools for thermal analysis is the finite element analysis technique. This is represented by programs such as ALGOR FEA. The method of analysis proceeds in the following sequence. All heat paths are characterized. The physical construction is broken up into infinitesimal elements and the heat flow is computed by matrix manipulation. The resulting output of these programs is a node listing which can be portrayed as isothermal lines. This allows the hot spot temperatures to be readily determined.