Cooling solutions for an electronic equipment box operating on UAV systems under transient conditions

The thermal behaviour of an electronic equipment box under transient conditions is investigated. The box consists of a cabinet designed to contain electronic devices (such as infrared and visible cameras, hyperspectral sensors, etc.) carried on UAV systems and thermal control has to be assured only for the short duration (15–20 min) of each flight. Experiments were performed by considering a single component as electronic unit and different cooling systems, including forced convection of external or internal air and use of phase change/storage units (cold gel packs) inside the box. The best cooling solution was obtained by placing cold gel packs inside the box in combination with the internal ventilation, without any air exchange with external environment. A simple mathematical model was devised to simulate the thermal response of the component during the cooling transient and calculated results were successfully compared with experimental results. As a result, it is expected that the developed model could be used as a reliable tool for transient thermal management of an array of components inside the box, as encountered in UAV remote sensing applications.