Techniques for thermal sensitivity analysis

Abstract

Techniques for computing the sensitivity of temperatures to changes in design variables needed for designing thermal protection systems are considered. It is shown that the choice of the most efficient technique depends on the ratio of number of temperature constraints to the number of design variables, as well as on the thermal analysis method employed. The analysis is specialized to the case of a structure modeled by finite elements, and an example of an insulation panel is used to demonstrate the techniques.