Digital Twin for a space qualification test facility: CIRA's thermal vacuum chamber

Space qualification test infrastructures are crucial to ensure that systems destined for space can operate under extreme conditions. However, test environments are often complex to manage, expensive to maintain and inflexible, especially when there is a need to introduce modifications or optimizations. This paper therefore proposes an initial step towards the creation of a Digital Twin of a specific test infrastructure: the CIRA Vacuum Thermal Chamber. In particular, the aim of the thesis concerns the development of a digital model of the chamber as a faithful replica of the physical system. In this way, it is possible to conduct simulations that can be exploited in the long term for the creation of a complete Digital Twin that could provide real-time monitoring of the test, conduct predictive analyses and optimize testing processes. The realization of the digital model involved an initial construction of the 3D geometry using Solidworks from the manufacturer's diagrams and in-situ measurements. Then the thermal model of the chamber was developed in Ansys where simulations were conducted with the aim of obtaining results comparable with the ones performed inside the machine. The results obtained show a discrepancy in the order of 2°C with regard to the chamber control temperature trend captured by the experimental test and the temperature trend obtained from the simulation. The first step in the construction of a Digital Twin has therefore been completed, opening the way for future developments: improving the accuracy of the model, using new data from experimental tests to increase the feasibility in relation to the validity of the model and identifying the correlation between the experimental and simulation results to derive the boundary condition inputs for a generic test.