As part of the competition for the Scientific Award of the President of the Polish Space Agency, diploma thesis on issues related to broadly understood space engineering, related to both theory and practical solutions, could be submitted. 

Kamil Dąbrowski, a student of the Faculty of Electronics and Information Technology and a graduate from the first cycle degree studies at the Faculty of Power and Aeronautical Engineering (with major in aerospace engineering), presented a thesis strictly related to the PW-Sat3 project, i.e. the third satellite which the Astronautic Student Research Group team is working on.

In the awarded thesis, our student analysed heat exchange in the fuel tank used for the cold gas engine of the PW-Sat3 satellite. An important part of the thesis was the description of the selection of the power and location of the heaters which make it possible to maintain stable pressure in the tank with butane in the state of a liquid/vapour two-phase mixture, taking into account the limited power of the heaters due to the satellite power budget. For this purpose, the third place winner of the competition used Ansys Fluent software and ESATAN TMS, which is used by the European Space Agency in its thermal analyses.

As emphasised by the PW-Sat team, Kamil Dąbrowski’s paper is crucial for the process of developing solutions that will make the propulsion system of the students’ satellite work properly during its mission in orbit.

Soon we will celebrate an anniversary of the launch of the WUT’s CubeSat! You can follow the progress of works on the students’ satellite No. 3 on PW-Sat profile on Facebook.