Airborne Thermal Superiority
We help our aero-defense partners compete by delivering great capabilities using high-densities without the thermal constraints of status quo solutions.
Oscillating heat pipes (OHPs) and vacuum brazed cold plates customized for mission-critical airborne subsystems.
100s of delivered thermal-mechanical solutions with TRL/MRL 9.
Internal design, thermal-mechanical verification, and manufacturing capabilities from our AS9100 facilities, including precision CNC machining, vacuum brazing, laser welding, and thermal-fluidic verification stations.
External supply chain for value-added services for airborne hardware including environmental qualification and NADCAP certified coatings, heat treatments, and more.
Illustration of airborne thermal management systems developed, manufactured, and delivered by ThermAvant Technologies. See hardware examples below.
Learn more about our actively-pumped fluid Cold Plates and passively driven Oscillating Heat Pipe solutions:
Common Airborne Thermal Management Solutions
Air Cooled Heat Exchangers
Our team designs, manufactures and delivers best-in-class air-cooled heat exchangers to optimize reliability, size, weight, power and total cost of ownership. We provide both solid metal and OHP-based heat exchangers, where OHPs dissipate heat fluxes across finned heat sinks at 10-100x higher conductance, and do so across of a range of gravitational fields.
Airborne Servers and Electronics Cooling
Structural base plate and thermal ground planes can be embedded with OHP microchannels to effectively spread heat across a rejection boundary or transport heat to a next higher assembly heat pumped fluid loop or finned heat sink.
Conformal Aerothermal Structures
OHPs can integrate directly into the outer mold line panels of aircraft to make optimal use of the airstream rejection boundary. Conformal OHP panels can be formed or built rigid into conformal 3D structures that reduce thermal resistance when sinking heat to the external environment.
Power Electronics Cold Plates
Pumped fluid cold plates with embedded, brazed micro- and mini-channels to manage kW-class heat loads at high thermal conductance and low pressure drop operation in demanding airborne applications to meet both reliability and SWaP-C constraints.
Electronically Steered Atenas (ESA)
OHP-embedded 2D and 3D structures for ESAs provide lightweight, compact/thin and ultra-high thermal conductance solutions, which are most useful when high-density RF modules are arrayed in millimeter-scale pitches (e.g. high frequency) – and still conduct their heat loads to remote heat sinks or radiators.
ThermAvant’s Airborne Heritage
2007
Founded by Dr. Bill Ma, Dr. Bin Wu, and Joe Boswell.
2009
First National Science Foundation grant awarded.
2015
First aero-defense prototypes delivered and Dr. Ma published OHP textbook.
2016
First pumped fluid loop (PFL) cold plates delivered.
2017
First airborne application OHPs delivered.
2018
OHP heat frame and PFL Cold plates enter production.
2019
OHPs hit TRL9 for electronics cooling applications.
2020
Built first OHPs made 100% in-house (i.e., vertically integrated manufacturing).
2021
Large production runs of OHPs (e.g., 1000s of units per order) for mission-critical aerospace and defense customers.
2023
Conformal High Flux Airborne OHPs enter volume production.
2025
Hit 5 million hours of on-orbit mission successful performance.
2026
Hit 10 million hours of on-orbit mission successful performance.
2026+
Contact us to be apart of what’s to come.
OHP Features & Benefits
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Overall, OHPs like other fluid-based or heat pipe technologies have heat transfer rates that are 4-400x higher than conventional solid state heat transfer materials. Unlike pumped fluid systems or wick-based heat pipes, OHPs operate passively via unique (and often preferable) pressure-driven fluid flow between heat source(s) and heat sink(s).
For example, our Aluminum heat transporters can move 100s of Watts through <4mm thick cross sections at lengths exceeding 1 meter with thermal conductances of >30 W/K, or effective thermal conductivities of >100,000 W/m-K.
Our OHP radiators can spread 100s or even 1000s of Watts across large surfaces with thermal conductances of >300 W/K.
At the device-level, OHP chip carriers and OHP heat frames can receive heat fluxes from <1 W/cm2 to >300 W/cm2; and these OHPs can spread-and-reject at ultra-high heat transfer coefficients ranging from 5,000 W/m2-K to >50,000 W/m2-K, depending on the size and power of the heat sources and OHPs.
Lastly, OHPs are able to achieve these high performance levels in a range of gravitational orientations (e.g., 0g, -1g and even up to -10g) for reliable operation: on-ground, on-orbit, and during tactical maneuvers.
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OHPs are integrated into existing components and do not add additional hardware to the platform. Mechanical components become multi-function thermal-mechanical structures. OHP integration negligibly affects the structural performance of the raw material.
OHPs can be made into customized geometries in ultra-thin, conformal form factors — including through features & complex 3D integration. -
OHPs are technology and manufacturing readiness level 9 (TRL/MRL 9) to exacting standards (AS9100) at volume. ThermAvant is producing 1,000s of OHPs per month in drop-in-replacement, conformal form factors.
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ThermAvant's oscillating heat pipe predictive models have been validated against thousands of empirical data sets. The models include side by side fluid comparison, limits of operation analysis, and predictive performance across wide temperature ranges and power loading conditions. OHPs at ThermAvant are primarily manufactured from aluminum but can be made from ceramics, refractory metals, dielectric materials, and other metallics.
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More than 10 million hours of successful on orbit mission time. Ground testing can effectively replicate OHP on-orbit/extra planetary performance. OHPs can operate in adverse gravity orientations to enable simpler ground testing. OHPs do not require startup heaters and are proven reliable and strong in high shock and vibration environments. Cold start conditions have been proven to be well handled by OHPs designed for an application.
Proven Thermal Solutions for Mission-Critical Applications
ThermAvant delivers flight-ready thermal hardware. We manage the entire process from concept through manufacturing. If you're developing a satellite, payload, or instrument that needs passive thermal control, let’s talk.
Our innovative thermal systems are trusted by both government and commercial sectors—including 10 of the top 18 U.S. defense contractors.
