Date of Award

2022

Degree Type

Capstone Project

Abstract

Team 25, comprised of Adam Murphy, Jack Abrain, Jay Charbonneau was assigned by Professor Nassershariff to Raytheon Technologies’ microprocessor thermal management problem. The objective for this project is to design a compact and efficient way to cool densely packed electronics such as CCA’s and microprocessors. Our design should be able to cool a total of 25 watts worth of heat from at least 2 separate sources.

To accomplish desired heat removal, Team 25 analysed multiple industry standards in microprocessor cooling to gain a better understanding of potential market solutions. After patent and literature searches, the team grasped a better understanding for possible improvements and better understanding of current processor cooling techniques. With this the team generated a total of 90 concepts to parse through and refine. After a PUGH analysis, a QFD analysis, CDR, and a few meetings with our sponsor we reduced our top three designs down to the teams top design.

After elimination of all other options our team decided to move forward with the planer form vapor chamber cooler. This design consists of a resin SLA print as the internal support structure that doubles as the outer walls of the unit on the y-axis. The lower plate is 3mm copper where any heat generating and dissipating devices are to be mounted. The top plate is 1/4 inch thick plexiglass with two threaded holes for the vacuum pump and gauge attachments. The resin print has 25 pins spaced within the square center to help with deformation. After testing team 25 was able to show that we can wick away heat from the heat generating components.

After Preliminary designs team 25 set off to make a newer generations of the model with the case made out of PLA and the seal made out of OOMOO 25 and a copper plate. These designs were made with removable pins to improve reiteration time and reduce overall filament costs. After this we started testing and had to develop the image processing engine to use find the temperature of the video and and through our testing it showed significant improvement over the the control which was meant to mimic current inboard PCB ground cooling. Great strides were made but there is still significant work to bring the cooler to mass market. All in all we made a usable product that shows significant advances over the alternatives.

Comments

Team Name: Team 25, Three Heater Defeaters

Sponsor: Raytheon Technologies

Document Reference: URI-MCE-CAP-PDR-2022-25

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