The thermal response test of payloads in a vacuum chamber, commonly referred to as TVAC, is one of the most widely used performance characterizations of the payload in the aerospace industry. This verification test almost always requires modeling and validation of the performance of the payload under operational and off-design mission scenarios. To obtain high-precision performance predictions, the thermal analyst must accurately model the chamber environment, including any temperature variation along the shroud. Then, the subsystems that have already been modeled and tested are integrated into a larger assembly and tested at the system level. Using a modular technique, the analyst can preserve the subsystem models and the chamber seamlessly and develop an integrated model for the test configuration. Also, since many subsystems or components are similar in configuration, but different in size, the need for models amenable to scaling without recreating the thermal boundary conditions and couplings in the model are required. This paper describes a methodology that was developed for adaptive integrated modular modeling for precision thermo-structural analysis of optics. The details of the modeling technique are explained using the thermal vacuum test chamber with two scaleable payloads. This methodology is not limited to the problem described here and is fully relevant to a wide range of applications.
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