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Technical Paper

Passive Thermal Management for Avionics in High Temperature Environments

2014-09-16
2014-01-2190
Under a program funded by the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL), Advanced Cooling Technologies, Inc. (ACT) has developed a series of passive thermal management techniques for cooling avionics. Many avionics packages are often exposed to environment temperatures much higher than the maximum allowable temperatures of the electronics. This condition prevents the rejection of waste heat generated by these electronics to the surrounding environment and results in significant ambient heat gain. As a result, heat must be transported to a remote sink. However, sink selection aboard modern aircraft is limited at best. Often, the only viable sink is aircraft fuel and, depending on mission profile, the fuel temperature can become too high to effectively cool avionics. As a result, the electronic components must operate at higher than intended temperatures during portions of the mission profile, which reduces component lifetime and significantly increases the probability of failure.
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