High Power Electric Weapons Cooling

Directed energy weapons under development by the Air Force and others can impose both high heat flux and large overall heat load demands on their cooling systems, up to 1000 W/cm2 and 100 kW respectively. TDA proposes to implement an ammonia-based spraycooling system to meet these demands. Our system is a novel two-phase thermal cycle that avoids the disadvantages of both mechanically pumped loops and heat pipes. This thermal management system is essentially passive, using self-generated fluid forcesto promote the circulation of the working fluid, thereby eliminating the weight and power draw penalties associated mechanically-pumped systems as well as providing sufficient fluid pumping pressure capability to implement high heat flux spray cooling withinsensitivity to g-loading. The proposed high heat flux cooling technology is applicable not only to heat removal from military directed empergy weapons but to high-power commercial eletronics, communications, computer and power-management markets. Inaddition, smaller versions of the cooling cycle are useful in cooling high performance chips and multi-chip modules.