Harris Corporation

Kevin C Cornish

Carl J Giannatto

Walter H Straub, Jr

A printed circuit card housing provides separate cooling fluid travel paths for convectively cooling on-board heat exchangers of non mil. spec. component-retaining printed circuit cards, and for thermal conductive cooling of conventional (VME) circuit cards, while keeping both types of circuit cards sealed from contaminants that may be present in the cooling fluid. The housing includes a chassis having a card slot cavity, into which both types of printed circuit cards are retained. A cooling fluid supply/exhaust plenum provides a first cooling fluid travel path that is ported to only convectively cooled circuit cards. In order to cool the remaining circuit cards, the cooling fluid supply/exhaust plenum ports cooling fluid entering the plenum along a second cooling fluid travel path through heat exchangers installed along sidewalls of the chassis.

Housing for diverse cooling configuration printed circuit cards

A housing structure for retaining and cooling a plurality of printed circuit boards includes an arrangement of parallel electrical connectors, which receive associated connectors mounted to respective ones of the printed circuit boards. Integrated with each printed circuit board is a respective frame-configured thermally conductive heat exchanger, that abuts a first side of the printed circuit board. A second side of the printed circuit board contains circuit components to be cooled. Cooling fluid flowing through the adjacent chambers of the heat exchanger draws heat away from the circuit components. A cooling fluid supply and removal plenum is coupled to adjacent fluid inlet and exhaust ports provided at a top end wall of the heat exchanger. Mounting the printed circuit components on the side of the printed circuit board opposite to that to which the heat exchanger is affixed isolates the circuit components from the heat exchanger and thereby prevents the circuit components from being exposed to any potentially corrosive foreign matter that may be present in the cooling fluid flowing through the heat exchanger. In addition, affixing the heat exchanger directly to the printed circuit board increases the flexure stiffness of the circuit board structure.

Printed circuit board-mounted, sealed heat exchanger

A sealed housing for cooling a plurality of printed circuit cards includes a chassis that supports a plurality of electrical connectors retaining printed circuit cards in mutually adjacent, spatially separated relationship. A first side of a respective printed circuit card is attached to an associated convectively cooled heat exchanger, having a cooling fluid flow chamber containing thermally conductive heat exchange elements through which an internal cooling fluid flows. A sealed, forced cooling fluid recirculation structure is mounted to the chassis and recirculates cooling fluid through heat exchangers of respective printed circuit cards. The sealed, internal cooling fluid recirculation structure contains thermally conductive heat exchangers that are convectively coupled with the internal cooling fluid and are conductively coupled to a distribution of thermally conductive fins on the outside of the chassis.

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Palm Bay, FL, United States of America

Kevin C Cornish