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For the past three decades spacecraft thermal analysis has been predominantly performed using lumped parameter solvers such as ESATAN and SINDA. This paper reports on the development of algorithms which allow the automatic generation of ESATAN/SINDA input files from finite element models. These input files contain the conductive and radiative links together with the solar, planet and albedo heat fluxes. The use of these algorithms therefore provides the opportunity to reduce the time taken to generate ESATAN/SINDA files and to postprocess results easily using widely available packages. In addition it allows the incorporation of thermal analysis into the concurrent engineering practices which are now being introduced.

This paper presents a general error model for MCRT algorithms, which is later applied to the calculation of some basic radiative entities. Furthermore, some issues related to the implementation of such models in a software tool are discussed. Finally, the accuracy control methods are applied to the more complex case of the heat flux absorbed in a given radiative face. Although only the relative error is considered through the discussion, similar results can be derived for the absolute error.

Communication becomes a crucial problem in European space engineering community, both in terms of data and of modelling techniques and experience embedded into software packages. At present, most data are specific to the software tool, communication of data requiring dedicated transformation programs. Many companies and organisations have defined or are in the process of defining special provisions for the communication between the software tools they are using, but still no provisions have been taken for communication with other companies, nor does this facilitate exchange of techniques, in terms of software.