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Conduction Cooling Heat Sinks

Conduction cooling thermal solutions are designed for harsh-environment applications where conventional, air-cooling techniques cannot be used. Increasing number of military applications require conduction cooling where systems are sealed from environment to prevent entry of dust and other contaminants. Enertron has designed numerous conduction cooling solutions for such applications.

Heat Sinks and Thermal Solutions for Military/Aerospace Industry

In such applications, a ruggedized enclosure is used to house the sensitive electrical components and circuit boards. Since the enclosure is completely sealed from the environment no cool air is supplied to cool the enclosed electronics. Instead, the outside walls of the enclosure are cooled. Therefore, the problem becomes how to get the heat away from the sensitive electronic components to the enclosure walls.

The conduction cooling is one of the methods thermal engineers use to solve such challenging applications. Conventional conduction cooling solutions consist of a conduction frame, back plate, injectors and wedge locks.

Wedge locks are used to provide a mechanical constraint for the conduction cooling solution and high-pressure contact to minimize thermal resistance from conduction cooling assembly to the walls. The conduction frame is generally designed to be in contact with the high power dissipating components to ensure a good conduction path for heat removal. It is usually made of aluminum for good thermal conductivity as well a low weight. However, in high power dissipating systems were weight not a concern, the frame can also be made out of copper. The back plate is attached to the back of the board and the injectors are used for ease of removal of the board.

Enertron engineers have also used heat pipes to provide best conduction path from heat sensitive electrical components to the walls. In contrast of making the frame out of copper, heat pipes do not add any significant weight to the overall conduction cooling assembly jet they provide excellent conduction path for heat removal. Incorporating heat pipes into conduction cooling solutions is not an easy task since gravity, G-forces, and vibration need to be considered. Enertron engineers are highly trained and experienced with applying heat pipes in such applications. If heat pipes are necessary part of your conduction cooling design, we strongly urged you to contact one of our engineers.