Thermal Simulation And Design Of The Cold Plate Of Phased Array Antenna

With the continuous improvement of aviation strength in our country, various types of advanced aircrafts have been in service. Radar antenna, as the eyes of the aircrafts, has been gradually enhanced in its detection range and target tracking. Among them, the airborne active phased array radar antenna has attracted widespread attention by domestic and foreign scholars due to its high efficiency and performance. The core component of the airborne active phased array radar antenna is T/R module. Thousands of T/R modules as well as tens of thousands of power transistors can be integrated in an antenna array surface, which constitutes a huge heat generation. Because of high integration and small space interval, it is difficult in heat dissipation for airborne active phased array radar antenna. Therefore, how to dissipate heat effectively for T/R modules is the key to the design of phased array antenna. Taking an airborne active phased array antenna as the research object, this paper designs a cooling plate in accordance with the structure of the phased array antenna according to its structural characteristics. Main work includes:(1) Thermal design and simulation of a single block of cold plate. Firstly, thermal simulation analysis of the cold plate with conventional channel topological structure is carried out. Then based on the fractal theory and bionics theory, the cold plate with imitation cellular topology is studied and three kinds of it are designed. At last, by thermal simulation, the heat dissipation capability of the cold plates with DC channel, S type flow passage and imitation cellular topology are compared under the same boundary condition.(2) Research on thermal analysis and modeling method of the T/R module. The internal structure of the T/R module of the antenna array is introduced, and the relationship of the receiver and transmitter phase of the T/R module with the temperature is described. Then, the thermal resistance model of the T/R module is established. To solve the multiscale problem of radar antenna model, modeling methods of component level is simplified, board level and system level are studied. Comparison has been carried on the three modeling methods above in terms of the number of mesh, substrate temperature error, shell temperature error, which provides support for subsequent simulation of the radar model.(3)Thermal design and optimization of phased array antenna. The active phased array radar is briefly introduced and the heat dissipation requirements of an airborne active phased array radar are described. Then thermal simulation of an airborne active phased array radar antenna are carried on and the simulation results are analyzed. In order to improve the poor capability of the cold plate of the original phased array radar, the cold plate with imitation cellular topology is applied to the original one for optimization. The simulation results of the optimized phased array antenna show that the high temperature, the T/R component ratio of the transistor and the flow pattern of cooling fluid are better than those of the original phased array radar. The optimized phased array antenna meets the design requirements.