SAM-on-Rails

The Spacecraft Aerothermal Model (SAM-on-Rails) is an engineering re-entry tool, with improved aerothermal models, designed for use in ESA's Concurrent Design Facility (CDF). It delivers improved modelling of demise phenomena, whilst maintaining the short execution times required by the iterative design methodology used within the CDF.

Belstead Research contributed its 3dof trajectory propagator (ATS3), enhanced heating/fragmentation module (AHM/VFM) to SAM-on-Rails. The code was developed in conjunction with Fluid Gravity Engineering, in response to a European Space Agency GSP project.

SAM-on-Rails is currently in use at ESA-ESTEC, and is licensed to Oxford University.