Cooling Performance of Air-Cooling Heat Sink for More Electric Aircraft (MEA) (Environment-Friendly More Electric Aircraft (MEA))
Highly efficient cooling of motor controllers under constraint of limited amount of cooling air is essential for development of More Electric Aircraft (MEA). In this study, air cooling performance was enhanced by water-mist injection. So far, experiments and one-dimensional analysis for a single-stage plate-fin heat sink [1] and three-dimensional conjugate heat transfer analysis for a multi-stage offset-fin heat sink [2] were performed and it was confirmed that the cooling performance was enhanced by the water-mist injection in both types of the heat sinks. Recently, three-dimensional thermal network analysis was applied to oil-coolers and heat sinks of electric aircraft in order to get results in a short time, and (multi-objective) optimization in the thermal management of the electric aricraft is being performed.[3]

Concept of More Electric Aircraft (MEA) and More Electric Engine (MEE)[1]. Temperature distribution of multi-stage air-cooling heat sink (numerical result of three-dimensional conjugate heat transfer analysis).