Automated multiphysics approach from mission planning to thermally induced performance degradation of an optical system (Invited Paper)

Optical systems for aerospace applications, such as space flight instruments and satellites, are under significant thermal loads due to solar radiation which highly impacts their overall performance. Therefore, during the design process, it is important to evaluate the performance of the system under mission-specific environmental conditions. Accurate design requires a multiphysics simulation approach to estimate the thermally induced optical performance degradation under operational conditions throughout the full mission. Structural Thermal Optical Performance (STOP) analysis offers a solution to get an early insight into the design and steer the optimization and calibration process accordingly. In this study, we are going to present an automated multiphysics workflow to perform STOP analysis considering the mission, integrating thermal, structural, and optical effects to ensure accurate system performance predictions using Ansys solutions. This workflow supports streamlined collaboration among different physics-specialized teams within an integrated multiphysics framework, based on a synthetic operational environment.