Improved Thermal Management Systems using Advanced Materials and Fluids

With increasingly demanding requirement in performance and capability of military vehicles, technical challenges in thermal management exist with regards to providing adequate cooling for their key components such as engine and power electronics, of which fluid coolant and materials to build heat exchangers are two critical factors to achieve the desired thermal management performance. In this SBIR project, Aegis Technology proposes to develop and demonstrate a highly efficient compact heat exchanger utilizing nanofluids as coolant, and high performance thermal material as the core of the heat exchanger. In the Phase I recently accomplished, we have demonstrated the feasibility of the proposed concept. Based upon the findings and success of Phase I, the proposed Phase II research will focus on technical issues in optimizing the design/processing and the system integrations. More candidate nanofluids and thermal materials will be evaluated, and our effort will be also extended from the heatsink-type heat exchangers into radiator-type heat exchangers as well. Detailed modeling and characterization will be carried out to show the enhance effects of the proposed technology in a vehicle thermal management system as compared to the baseline system. Subscale testing will be conducted first to validate the model and designs, and select the best design for full scale concept fabrication and test, in which calculations of fuel savings and weight reduction in a vehicle cooling system will be conducted to determine the percent improvement to the vehicle thermal management system. In addition, the applications of nanocoolants for a variety of heat exchangers designs will be evaluated and reliability issues relating to stability of nanofluid along with the integration of heat exchanger into system applications will be also addressed.