CALCULATION OF SPACECRAFT TEMPERATURE FIELD BY MONTE CARLO METHOD

The Monte Carlo method is combined with the thermal network method to solve the temperature field of a spacecraft. The radiative transfer coefficients for infrared radiation among the thermal network nodes and for solar radiation among the surface elements are calculated by the Monte Carlo method to eliminate the reasonless assumptions for the calculation of view factors. A software for calculating the radiative transfer coefficients and solving thermal network equations is developed to analyze the steady state temperature field of a satellite, by which the design scheme will be determined. The incident heat flux data needed for the calculation is presented by the NEVADA code. The investigation shows that the Monte Carlo method in combination with the thermal network method is flexible to the complicated structure of a system and the radiative characteristics of element surfaces, but the calculation is relatively heavy.