Generalized Predictive Thermal Control of a Thermal-Vacuum Chamber for Space Qualification Tests

This work aims at increasing the effectiveness and efficiency of the temperature control in the thermal-vacuum chamber available at the Department of Aerospace Science and Technology of Politecnico di Milano (Milan, Italy). The chamber is used for qualification tests of spacecraft components and small satellites. To this aim, high vacuum conditions are guaranteed using an air pump and a turbo-molecular pump in cascade. Moreover, the thermal control system is designed to simulate thermal cycles in the range-75°C to 200°C. Temperature control is currently regulated using a Proportional-Integral- Derivative (PID) controller. Unfortunately, the PID regulator tends to be inadequate to control the temperature during qualification tests, as it is tuned to effectively control the baseplate temperature of the chamber. However, temperature requirements are usually provided on specific points of the component to be qualified. This work investigates the possibility of solving this problem by controlling the temperature inside the chamber with a generalized predictive control (GPC) technique.