Thermal Solution of High Flux Phased Radar Antenna for Military Application

In military applications, cooling of high heat flux antenna is a challenging problem considering the thermal, mechanical and limited space requirements. In addition to system cooling, thermal uniformity among the high power amplifiers is one of the main issues that should be taken into account for electrical performance requirements. Cold plate is the main mechanical part of the radar antenna structure where it serves as a cooler and a carrier. Liquid path and fin pattern are critical parts of the cold plate design that needs to be carefully studied. These topics are comprehensively discussed in this work. Finite element method software has been used for CFD and thermal analysis. Although cold plate is designed to cool high heat flux, it is known that there is liquid flow in it which applies some amount of hydraulic pressure. Some precautions are taken to withstand high pressure inside the cold plate. The system solution together with manifold design is examined in this study. The internal pressure drop in cold plate has a direct relation with the manifold design. All these topics are discussed in this work.