Improving air cooling efficiency of transmit/receive modules through using heat pipes

Abstract

Abstract Increasing the cooling efficiency of T/R modules is an important problem in the process of designing active phased array antennas. In this study, the authors use numerical simulation to study the ways of increasing the air cooling efficiency of a T/R module containing 8 active microwave elements with a heat output power of 28\u202fW each. The simulation allowed obtaining the temperature distribution over the mounting surface of the base for three values of the air flow velocity in the interfin channels: 2, 6 and 9\u202fm/s. It is shown that the maximum temperature of the mounting surface in the spots where microwave elements are mounted is 90.6\u202f°C at an air flow velocity of 2\u202fm/s. If the air velocity is increased to 6\u202fm/s, the temperature in these areas decreases to 77.1\u202f°C, and to 73.0\u202f°C at a velocity of 9\u202fm/s. To make air cooling even more efficient and to reduce the temperature of the mounting surface, a new technical solution based on the use of heat pipes is proposed. It is shown that the use of 8 flat heat pipes in the design of the T/R module allows reducing the maximum temperature value in the spots with installed microwave elements by another 20.3\u202f°C, i.e., to 52.7\u202f°C at an air velocity of 9\u202fm/s. At the same time, the non-uniformity of the temperature field of the mounting base decreases significantly (by more than 20\u202f°C).