21st century challenge: thermal management design requirements

As we enter the 21^st century, the system engineering challenge of thermal management of digital avionics is intensifying. The functional need for faster, smaller devices is pressing systems to their mechanical and physical limits. At present, thermal management is widely seen as a secondary issue, needed only for reliability of the components. The goal of this paper is to show that thermal management is becoming more than a reliability factor in digital avionics. It is a fundamental driver in the development of the architecture for advance designs. Thermal design is integral in meeting the functional design requirements of systems, especially as the drive to lower cost, move systems to use more common commercial devices and subsystems. This paper address some of the impacts this design process has on avionics system performance, and how these impacts affect the system engineering requirements of the air vehicle. Thermal management must be an integral part of the air vehicle and avionic systems design to ensure system engineering success. The goal of this paper is to give a clearer picture of the challenges we face in addressing thermal management issues. One topic that is explored is how functional performance can be severely compromised in systems where the design is driven primarily by TM. We need to better understand the dynamics of trading weight which may be directly linked to the thermal management challenge. We want to show the relevance of thermal management design requirements to architecture development of avionics systems. To get the best system, the entire dynamic picture of how thermal management ties in, with electrical and physical design is needed to achieve the desired efficiency and effectiveness in the 21^st century systems.