Mainstream Engineering to Develop a Thermal Management System for Military Airborne Laser

ROCKLEDGE, FL – September 23rd, 2010 – Mainstream Engineering Corporation, leading research, and development company specializing in advanced thermal control and energy conversion, has been awarded a contract from the U.S. Navy to develop a thermal management system for a tactical airborne high-power laser.

Current aircraft thermal management systems will not be able to dissipate the high-heat-flux thermal loads or transport and reject the overall thermal loads that will be generated from future tactical lasers. Beyond overcoming these limitations, developmental systems must meet the strict volume, mass, and reliability requirements associated with aircraft operation.

Mainstream has already experimentally demonstrated an advanced cooling technology that minimized system weight and volume while reliably cooling critical laser components. Additionally, Mainstream engineers completed the design for a full-scale thermal management system. Now the company will fabricate the full-scale thermal management system according to the completed design. The prototype will be experimentally evaluated through numerous rounds of thermal and environmental testing.

After proving the system is reliable, Mainstream will deliver its compact, lightweight thermal management system at the end of the contract period. This ambitious effort is possible because of Mainstream’s extensive experience in thermal controls and the development of robust military systems. After building and testing the full-scale system, the technology will be easily transferable to many other airborne high-heat-flux cooling applications, drastically reducing the resource requirements for system development and integration of thermal management for other high-power electronic systems.