Phase-Change Cooling for Operational (Weapons) Environment

"The challenge in cooling Direct Energy (DE) weapons is to dissipate 500 - 1000 W/cm2 using compact, light-weight cooling hardware, low coolant flow rates and relatively low pressure drops. This is a formidable challenge considering those attributes aretypically incompatible with very-high-heat-flux dissipation. Complicating the task of heat acquisition/transmission/rejection is the need to deploy such weapons in ground, sea, and air based platforms; each offers unique heat rejection challenges andlimitations. Added to the mix of concerns are potential shock and vibration, and high ambient temperatures. Military aircraft pose additional challenges due to intermittent exposure to high-G forces. The primary objective of the proposed Phase I studywill be to lay the foundation for implementation of a new, highly robust phase-change cooling technology in DE weapons. This technology utilizes micro-flow passage control to maintain the coolant is close proximity to the heat-dissipating surface.Thermal tests will be performed on a module containing a representative cooling cell to validate the required heat dissipation. This project will also explore scale-up of the single-cell findings to a 100 kW cooling system. The proposed effort will havefar reaching impact on cooling systems for defense weapons. This study is also expected to yield new breakthrough thermal management solutions for commercial avionics, telecommunication systems, sp