Applications for High Thermal Conductivity Graphite Heat Sinks for Fighter Avionics

High thermal conductivity composite heat sinks for various advanced fighter and helicopter avionics applications have been designed, fabricated, and tested. Baselines are existing VME and SME architecture module aluminum and AlBeMet heat sink thermal planes for avionic boxes. Novel manufacturing approaches combined with pitched-based graphite fiber materials and non-destructive thermal validation methodologies led to delivery of hardware to prime systems contractors for qualification. The composite heatsink has a definite advantage in price, weight, stiffness, performance and manufacturing (1).