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Operation Heli-STAR (Helicopter Short-Haul Transportation and Aviation Research) was established and operated in Atlanta, Georgia, during the period of the 1996 Centennial Olympic Games. Heli-STAR had three major thrusts: 1) the establishment and operation of a helicopter-based cargo transportation system. 2) the management of low-altitude air traffic in the airspace near the Olympic venues, and 3) the collection and analysis of research and development data associated with items 1 and 2. Heli-STAR was a cooperative industry government program that included cargo shippers in the Atlanta area, the helicopter industry, aviation electronics manufacturers, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), and support contractors.

The objective of the work discussed within this paper is to present a modeling methodology to assess thermal management system (TMS) concepts for aircraft to determine adequacy in meeting thermal requirements and constraints for the duration of the flight1. To accomplish this, an analysis tool that has the capability to investigate steady state and transient thermal hydraulic conditions on a component to system-wide level is employed. This is achieved by simulating the conditions within a cooling network to provide temperature, pressure and mass flow rate distributions, as well as the temperature of surrounding engine and airframe structures. With today's reduced budgets, new aircraft systems will be less common and retrofitting existing high performance aircraft will become more common. Pushing these technologies to their thermal limits is resulting in cooling requirements that were not present or even contemplated during their original designs.