Mechanical and Thermal Engineering

The thermal and mechanical competences of the CSL originally emerged to support our historical activities; design and integration of space instruments, as well as operation of our unique set of environmental test facilities. The thermo-mechanical lab is a team of engineers with the support of a drawing office. This team includes experienced and young engineers and highly skilled designers.

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embers of the team have worked on various space instruments as Integral/OMC, Herschel PACS, COROT, JWST/MIRI, JUNO/UVS, Sentinel-3/OLCI, Sentinel-4/UVN, Proba-2/SWAP, Exomars/NOMAD, CHEOPS, ISS/VMU-MkII, Proba-3/ASPIICS, Plato, Solar Orbiter/EUI, CO2M/FCU. People also participated to the development of stand-alone thermal systems for space environmental test facilities for India and Kazakhstan.

The team is also supporting CSL’s testing laboratory in developing test set-ups to keep the facilities to their best level. From standard test set-up adaptation to the development of a unique facility for the thermal cycling of JUICE samples before its mission to Jupiter (Wide Range Thermal Facility). Members of the laboratory are qualified operators for the cryogenic facilities (liquefiers, refrigerators). Skills were also developed to create measurement benches in CSL’s own cryostats.

The laboratory drawing office is using SolidWorks to design all the instruments and set-ups required by CSL teams and, in collaboration with internal or external workshops, the office is supervising the manufacturing activities.

The engineering team developed its own software for thermal shroud design and sizing, and is also highly experienced in using ESATAN TMS, software recommended by ESA for all thermal analyses. The team can also manage mechanical and thermo-mechanical analyses either internally (SolidWorks Simulation) or in collaboration with external companies (Samcef, Nastran).

The team is also developing expertise in additive manufacturing via various research projects and is willing to further include additive manufacturing in its toolbox for the design of instruments and set-ups.

In support to all these competences in space environment, the team has acquired experience dealing with process and materials, cleanliness or radiation testing.

See our Expertise\ Thermal & Mechanical engineering