Description
The objective is to develop and test a direct chip to baseplate thermal concept based on Pulsating Heat Pipes that reduces design complexity and yet widens the operating temperature range and thermal transport performance.Targeted Improvements: - Improved heattransfer performance to at least 60 watts per chip.- Operation in adverse vertical gravity and below -40C- Reduced manufacturing complexity in chip to unit baseplate thermal transport compared to current state of the art systems Description: Current trends are towards high-throughput and flexible geostationary satellites using greater numbers of SSPAs, digital transparent processors (DTP),phased arrays, etc.This increases the on-board processing and results in greater amounts of heat rejection while lowering equipment operating temperatures. In particular, the ability to reduce the delta temperature via direct chip cooling, is more effective thanconduction through equipment alone and would dramatically improve rejection efficiency. Currently the existing direct chip cooling solutions utilise direct thermal conduction via PCB architecture, or sometimes with Loop Heat Pipe and/or Standard Heat Pipe technologies which results in challenging design and manufacturing constraints due to the very small pore sizes required in the wick. Pulsating Heat Pipes (PHPs) are a beneficial alternative as they do not require complex features (no internal wick features) as it consists of a thin meandering 2-phase capillary tube (<5mm) which can be densely packed to provide high thermal performance: both high heat flux density and transport capability. Using PHPs for direct chip cooling would allow to reduced radiator areas (reducing satellite volume and mass) or to operate chips at higher performance with higher power dissipation since heat is better rejected. PHPs have a low sensitivity to gravity and are attractive, as they areeasier to manufacture and test compared to the current state-of-the-artLoop and Standard Heat Pipes.This activity will design, manufacture, and test a breadboard of a novel thermal architecture based on Pulsating Heat Pipe technology embedded in telecom electronic box modules for direct chip cooling