Thermal Management for Mission Critical Aircraft Equipment

The operation of modern electronics under extremely low thermal conditions (below -50 °C) encounters a multitude of difficulties.The age of chip shortage limited available selection of state-of-the-art electronic components to only a fraction of previous offer.Automotive industry has gobbled most of the yet available stock while the aerospace-grade components are not available at all.In this paper we evaluate application of positive temperature coefficient heating strips as a means to keep the under-specified electronic devices in reasonable operational range while minimizing impact on the electronics design process.Our experimental results of PTC heaters testing suggest significant benefits compared to standard heaters used in the aerospace industry, but also some challenges, which are discussed in this paper.