High heat flux from electronic devices remains a continuing challenge for cooling of electronics hardware in radar antenna applications pertaining to the defense industry. Cooling methods for such applications have varied from conduction cooling approaches for the cooling of circuit card assemblies, to advanced convection cooling using two phase flow (with pumped refrigerant) for the high heat flux devices used in transmit / receive modules. It is found that the limiting parameter in such applications is usually the heat flux from the electronic device. This paper provides an overview of the cooling techniques used for defense electronics, as well as current modeling tools and analytical methods used for thermal design during the product development phase. The role of thermal interface materials used in the material stack up for the thermal design solutions will also be touched upon. Additionally, the importance of using experimental techniques to characterize the heat transfer coefficient for the pumped refrigerant two phase flow will be discussed.

Volume Subject Area:
Heterogeneous Integration: Micro-Systems With Diverse Functionality
Topics:
Computer cooling, Radar, Cooling, Heat flux, Defense industry, Design, Electronics, Refrigerants, Two-phase flow, Analytical methods, Circuits, Convection, Hardware, Heat conduction, Heat transfer coefficients, Modeling, Product development
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