Thermal Design of Integrated Avionic Racks for Aircraft

The thermal design of integrated avionic racks for aircraft installation must be evaluated from a total systems integration vantage point. The thermal design parameters are the drivers that will dictate the maximum allowable module power for reliability and avionic partitioning. Therefore, the objective of the thermal design procedure must be to provide a system configuration with maximum reliability and minimum aircraft penalty and life cycle costs. As part of the Integrated Rack Concept Study in V/STOL Type Aircraft a procedure was developed and applied to module configurations with chip carrier semiconductor devices.

The cooling air requirement at the aircraft environmental control system interface was defined as a function of air supply temperature.