TGP: Thermal Ground Plane

As electronic system technology advances – with continual increases in requirements leading to increasing demand for higher power consumption – there has been increasing pressure on the thermal engineering and heat rejection technologies used. 

The need for performance inevitably leads to operation of most electronic systems at the limits of the available thermal management technology. Today, one widely used method of thermal management in DoD systems is the heat pipe, due to its simplicity, reliability, practicality, and low-cost. However, heat pipes have thermal transport and geometric limitations. 

TGP will expand upon the 2-phase cooling approach utilized in heat pipes and will enable a new generation of high-performance, integrated systems to operate at high power density without problems from temperature gradients, increased weight, or added complexity. An important feature of the intended TGP technology is complete compatibility with many existing DoD systems without redesign of those systems; insertion of TGPs into these systems can provide new engineering margins that can be taken up by increasing the power use of the system, reducing the operating temperature of the electronic devices, or reducing the size of the other components of the thermal management system. 

In addition, the availability of TGPs will allow future DoD system designs to be more aggressive in increases of density, power consumption, and performance than is presently allowed.