Jl. Lage et al., NUMERICAL STUDY OF A LOW PERMEABILITY MICROPOROUS HEAT SINK FOR COOLING PHASED-ARRAY RADAR SYSTEMS, International journal of heat and mass transfer, 39(17), 1996, pp. 3633-3647
Microporous media is being used to develop an improved forced convecti
on cold plate device for removing waste heat from high frequency phase
d-array radar apertures. The waste heat, generated by transmit and rec
eive microwave functions mounted in separate electronic modules, is co
nducted to the surfaces of a thin rectangular enclosure (cold plate) t
hrough which coolant flows. The performance of the phased-array radar
is known to deteriorate very rapidly when the difference in operating
temperatures of identical electronic components within each module inc
reases. The cold plate device investigated here, designed to minimize
this temperature difference, consists of a microporous layer placed (b
razed) within the cold plate. A theoretical transport model is develop
ed around an extended system of two-dimensional equations obtained by
considering a thin enclosure and integrating the original three-dimens
ional equations along the direction of smaller dimension. Thermo/hydra
ulic characteristics are obtained through numerical simulations consid
ering a low permeability aluminum alloy porous layer, and air, water a
nd PAO as coolants. A theoretical estimate of the global pressure drop
across the cold plate is also obtained and compared with the numerica
l results. The microporous cold plate provides substantially more unif
orm operating temperature for identical components in all module housi
ngs than a cold plate without porous layer. Results also suggest an in
creased global heat transfer coefficient reducing the operational (jun
ction) temperature of the electronics for the same waste hear. Copyrig
ht (C) 1996 Elsevier Science Ltd.