In the past decades, the problem of nonlinear behavior analysis
of dynamical systems is of interest of researchers from over the
world. In the field of space technology, satellite thermal analysis is
one of the most complex but important tasks because it involves the
operation of satellite equipment in orbit. To explore the thermal
behavior of a satellite, one can use numerical computation tools
packed in a specialized software. The numerical computation-based
approach, however, needs a lot of resources of computer. When
changing system parameters, the calculation process of thermal
responses may require a new iteration corresponding to the
parameter data under consideration. This leads to an “expensive”
cost of computation time. Another approach based on analytical
methods can take advantage of the convenience and computation
time, because it can quickly estimate thermal responses of a certain
satellite component with a desired accuracy. Until now, there are
very little effective analytical tools to solve the problem of satellite
thermal analysis because of the presence of quartic nonlinear terms
related to heat radiation. For the above reasons, I have chosen a
subject for my thesis, entitled “Investigation of temperature
responses of small satellites in Low Earth Orbit subjected to thermal
loadings from space environment” by proposing an efficient
analytical tool, namely, a dual criterion equivalent linearization
method which is developed recently for nonlinear dynamical
systems.