Thermal Management

Submersion and Directed Flow Cooling Technology for Military Applications

As the US military shifts from boots on the ground to drones in the sky, there will be an increasing need for computing power on foreign soil, under the sea and in the air. Design objectives will be difficult to achieve with legacy technology. Electronic gear must be deployed by transport plane and require rapid setup once the destination is reached. Systems will need to be hardened to survive extreme temperatures, desert sand, salt air and pollution. Fuel logistics to serve remote locations can be difficult and expensive. Every kilowatt-hour of electricity converted to heat must be dissipated and, ideally, the waste energy should be recycled. For ground installations, it will be useful to consider distributing computing resources around rather than concentrating them at a single location that may be vulnerable to attack. Silent operation also is desirable.

The traditional method of cooling electronics by circulating air around and through components achieves none of these objectives. The cooling system comes in pieces, and field assembly takes time. Fans used to circulate massive amounts of air waste energy, take space, make noise and expose computing equipment to corrosion and air pollutants. Mechanical refrigeration systems to maintain humidity levels and cool equipment in hot weather waste even more energy.