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.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.