Research On Coupled Structural-Thermal Optimization Design Of Cold Plate For Active Phased Array Antennas

With the rapid development of modern electronic technology and the growing demand of military tactics, high performance of radar is required, such as the effective range of radar, target resolution and recognition, anti-interference ability, reliability and maintainability. Compared with other type of radars, active phased array radar has good performance and advantages, so that it has become the mainstream of the development of the radar. Usually, a large number of high energy electronic devices are integrated on the radar to achieve high performance and the requirements of multi functions, while some devices are very sensitive to temperature, such as T/R components. So, it is essential to design heat dissipation system of the radar, in order to ensure the reliability and stability when the radar operating. Cold plate, as a kind of efficient and mature heat transfer equipments, is widely used in thermal design of electronic equipment. And it can effectively solve the heat dissipation problem of active phased array antenna. Antenna coldplate should be designed not only in good heat dissipation design but also in reasonable structure design to ensure reliable work for its environment is harsh enough. Therefore, considering the requirements of the structure and thermal on antenna coldplate, the structure-thermal optimal design is quite necessary.Firstly, the basic theory of cold plate design on antenna is introduced in the paper. deep hole S-type channel cold plate to achieve thermal control on active phased array antenna is designed. The influence of relevant parameters on the heat dissipation is analyzed, such as inlet position and diameter of channel, velocity of flow and temperature in inlet of coolant. Then make sure the inlet position and temperature in inlet, and determine optimization variables and its range to carry out the thermal optimization. Antenna coldplate that can dissipate efficiently and satisfy lowest pressure drop is designed through thermal optimization. The results indicate that while just considering the need of heat dissipation, thermal design on coldplate can achieve good cooling effect, but it does not take something into account, such as light weight, small size of cold plate and the requirements of strength and stiffnesss of structure. Secondly, a lightweight design of the antenna cold plate is designed with the constraint of structural requirement. In this part, the modal and random vibration analysis of the antenna cold plate is analyzed and structure optimization design is carried out for the purpose of lightweight design. Through the research on the structure characteristics of the antenna cold plate, optimization variables and its range is determined to carry out the structural optimization with the constraint of stress and the fundamental frequency to establishe the structural optimization model. The weight of antenna coldplate is obviously reduced. And it can meet the need of lightweight structure, meantime, the structure strength and the fundamental frequency can be ensured. Finally, based on the research, heat dissipation and lightweight on antenna coldplate is analyzed from the perspective of structure-thermal coupling. It means that the weight of structure should be much lower while the design requirements of the heat dissipation, strength and stiffnesss of structure and the fundamental frequency must be satisfied. The work in this paper meet the requirements of the current development of antenna coldplate, which has practical significance for actual engineering application.