Air Cooled Heat Sink for High Power RF Amplifiers
THE CHALLENGE
Cooling High Power RF Equipment
Designing an efficient air-cooled heatsink to cool next-gen RF technology, powered by high-flux transistors. Extensive CFD modelling to ensure all devices are cooled simultaneously within the packaging constraints set out by the client
THINKING OUTSIDE THE BOX, COOLING IN THE BOX
Cooling High-Flux Devices using air-cooled heat pipe technology
- Quantified the design and boundary conditions with existing air-cooled designs to benchmark the performance requirements over “Traditional” air cooled technologies.
- Working closely with the customer to determine thermal and mechanical boundary conditions for their application.
- Creating a fully functional CFD model to simulate the client design accurately.
- Optimizing the mechanical and thermal design. Maximizing the thermal performance of the heat sink within the mechanical boundary conditions laid out by the clients.
- Designing for manufacturability.
- Periodic design meetings with the client and the manufacturing team to ensure all stakeholders are confident in the design, its performance, and manufacturability within the client’s budgeted cost.
RESULTS
Cooling all high flux designs
- Cooled RF power transistors with a heat flux of 40 W/cm2
- Total cooling of 1.8 kW in limited space
- Optimized fin spacing to maximize flow rate from the fan
- Applied the use of heat pipes to boost fin efficiency and baseplate heat spread from the high flux devices
- ITS Solution: 20°C temperature reduction, reducing the heat sink thermal resistance by 32%
