Harris Corporation

Walter H Straub, Jr

Voi Nguyen

Carl J Giannatto

Kevin C Cornish

Jonathan Frank Holmes

An apparatus for housing and cooling circuit card assemblies employed in communication and other systems is disclosed including a chassis having opposed end walls which are formed with a series of spaced inlet card guides and correspondingly spaced outlet card guides, respectively. A straight-pass heat exchanger is directly mounted to each circuit card assembly via thermally conductive material, and opposed ends of the heat exchanger are mounted by a wedge lock to respective inlet and outlet card guides. The heat exchanger employs unique angled interface geometry that creates a gasketless airtight joint with complimentary inlet and outlet card guide geometry through which cooling air passes.

Heat exchanger system for circuit card assemblies

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.

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Palm Bay, FL, United States of America

Walter H Straub, Jr