Thermal performance of non-metallic two-phase cold plates for humanoid robot cooling

Abstract

For the reliable and continuous operation of humanoid robot, various types of multiple heat sources such as CPUs, motors, drivers should be cooled down by using compact and light-weight cooling devices. In this study, thermal performances of one metallic cold plate and two different types of non-metallic cold plates with a dielectric coolant (FC-72) as a working fluid are investigated in two-phase circulation without any external driving force. All types of cold plates have the same dimension of 32times26 mm <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</sup> base area with 7 mm in height. A metallic cold plate was fully made of copper. Two non-metallic polycarbonate (PC) cold plates, which are designed to reduce the overall weight of robot cooling system, are composed of a PC cover with two copper different bases. All cold plates are mounted on a 20times20 mm <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</sup> copper heating block with two cartridge heaters of 30 W/cm <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</sup> . It is found that both of PC cold plates show higher thermal performance compared to the copper cold plate in terms of thermal resistance based on a unit mass.