Thermal Design and Analysis of a Military Aircraft Intercommunications System

A new fiber optic/digital intercommunication system (ICS) for the Navy´s E-2D advanced Hawkeye aircraft is under development to replace the aging analog system. The unique design of the system required a single chassis, called the Crew Station, to house a single board computer (SBC) and all associated electronics for each of the five operator´s stations aboard the aircraft. This paper presents the methods employed to develop a satisfactory thermal design for the crew station without the fabrication of prototypes. A qualification unit was constructed, instrumented and tested, and the empirical results were compared with the simulations to validate the modeling. The agreement of the data was comfortably within acceptable testing and modeling errors and yielded confidence in the design of the ICS.