An experimental study on the transient thermal response of an electronic equipment box for UAV remote sensing applications

An experimental study of the transient thermal characteristics of an electronic equipment box is presented. The box is designed to house devices typically used for UAV based remote sensing applications. Different cooling systems, aimed at maintaining all the components within their allowable temperature limits for the duration (15-20 min) of each UAV flight, have been considered. They include forced convection of external or internal air and use of storage units (cold gel packs) inside the box. Experiments indicated that a mixed active/passive technique consisting in the combination of cold gel packs and internal ventilation, without any air renewal, provides the most suitable cooling condition.