A Comparative Study of Satellite Battery Performance in Space Environment
摘要
Batteries play vital roles in many space applications. It is one of the main components of the spacecraft subsystem. It can provide the power required to maintain the running life of spacecraft instruments in a space environment. It allows controlling and managing the spacecraft to perform its processing for completing the time required in space. Obtaining a reliable battery for this purpose is important to success. For satellite applications, the batteries generate the power for the subsystems to communicate and transmit the data between the satellite and the ground station. They can be used to store the recharging power from the solar panel and use it during the required times to make the power run all the time. Therefore, examining the power capability of the satellite is essential to ensure its functional efficiency during the long working period. To study the effect of the space environment on the satellite batteries temperatures, the current work presents comparison results for the satellite batteries in three different working situations namely, nominal, hot and cold cases. The cases of hot and cold are considered severe and are chosen to represent the worst cases. One solar day is the simulation time that is enough to capture all significant power budget events. A finite element modelling (FEMAP) is used in the analysis. The numerical predicted results are compared with existing lab tests and with real values during orbital operations (Ground station). Predicted results show that the minimum and maximum average temperature of the batteries during nominal orbital operation is 15.80 °C and 19.40 °C, respectively. The lab results show that the minimum and maximum battery temperatures range between 10 °C and 30 °C. The predicted and real orbital operation temperatures are within an acceptable range when they compared with the lab results.