Performance Characteristics of the Space Station Avionics Air Cooling Package

The Avionics Air Assembly Cooling Package which provides cooling for high heat load racks aboard the International Space Station has been designed and developed to balance challenging requirements for noise emissions, emitted vibrations, power usage, weight, and volume. The assembly consists of a high speed selectable flow fan, a compact air-to-water heat exchanger, noise attenuation components, motor controller electronics, and mounting structure. This paper addresses the final hardware configuration and performance characteristics and the successful development program that was required to create the first qualification/flight assembly. It describes the initial component development hardware performance, the initial package integration results, the completed optimization effort, and the final package performance. These optimization cycles, both to improve and reduce component performance, were necessary to attain the desired package results from this highly integrated assembly.