Flow Rate and Graphite Foam Thermal Management for a Power Amplifier Array

Abstract

Computational fluid dynamics software has been extensively employed in the design of thermal management systems for electronics. There continues to be a need for experimental evaluation of thermal management systems to validate the results of the computational fluid dynamics simulations. This primarily experimental research explores several heat transfer enhancing inserts for a liquid cooled base plate channel design applied to an array of generic power amplifier units. Several different channel insert configurations (both geometric and material type) are investigated as miniheat exchangers using both copper fins and graphite foam. Experimental data were recorded measuring the chip temperatures as a function of volume flow rate. Computational fluid dynamics simulations were also conducted to guide the experimental program. This work has a focus on the volume flow rate impact on the thermal management of a tightly packed array of power amplifiers using liquid cooling.