Numerical investigation of forced convection thermal management of high power electronics on a rotary platform

An package on a rotary platform including two components with 600 W, one component with 350 W and one small component with 70 W heat dissipation rates (1620 W total heat load) is numerically and experimentally investigated under steady state conditions. In order to avoid rotary joints and to reduce the cost, the thermal management solution for the heat dissipation is placed entirely on the rotary platform. The thermal management solution consists of heat sinks attached on vertical side surfaces of the platform. The heat dissipating components are connected to the heat sinks with heat pipes. The heat sinks are covered with cover plates to form flow channels that are used for forced convection heat transfer with the help of high power fan assemblies. The thermal management system is numerically modeled and then the numerical model is validated with the help of a set of experiments. The validated model is used for the optimization of the system. The optimization parameters are the heat pipe locations and their connections to the heat sinks. The optimization parameters are the heat pipe locations, their dimensions, their connections to the heat sinks and fin structures of the heat sinks. The optimization criterion is to maintain nearly uniform temperature distributions on the heat sinks. The constraints are the lengths of the standard heat pipes and the limited options to bend the heat pipes due to their fragile structures. The system can keep the hot spot temperatures below the allowed maximum temperature of 120 °C even for the case of 50 °C ambient air temperature