Type of Awards: SBIR Phase I and Phase II Subcontractors: Mezzo Technologies and Honeywell Aerospace Contract Numbers: FA8650-08-M-2843 and FA8650-09-C-2400 Agency: U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory Status: On Going Periods: 9/18/07 to 9/18/08 and 5/28/09 to 9/13/11 Principal Investigator: A. Heltzel Abstract: The current thermal management effort for high performance aircraft focuses much attention on more efficient energy rejection through the development of advanced heat exchanger technologies. PC Krause and Associates (PCKA) is currently filling a much-needed gap of scaling and performance knowledge in the Air Force Phase I SBIR effort. 3-D computational fluid dynamics models have been constructed, which have been shown to accurately predict microstructured heat sink performance where conventional analysis methods fail. The ability to collapse high-fidelity data into a performance database is allowing PCKA to develop a rapid analysis software package for advanced heat exchangers. In Phase II, PCKA will team with both Honeywell Aerospace and Mezzo Technologies Inc., two manufacturers of candidate heat exchangers. This collaboration will enable the application of the analysis tool to near-term heat exchanger design projects, in addition to providing validation, manufacturing, and non-core effect information to the analysis method. PCKA will expand the modeling and simulation effort to encompass additional heat exchanger designs, materials, working fluids, operating conditions, and the true dynamic response of candidate heat exchangers. The software tool to be developed in Phase II directly addresses the stated goal of this project: accelerating the design concept to development to fabrication...
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