Electrical characteristics at 60,000ft

[Qacer]

Hello all,

I'm interested in finding out more about electrical characteristics at very high altitudes. I know that there are some studies about radiation effects on circuits in space, but I haven't encountered any other electrical related concerns at high altitudes.

Does anyone know of any resources to start?

I've been searching scholar.google.com to find any interesting things. So far, I have found none.

Thanks!

 

[Soccerman06]

Go work at IBM, my dad designs circuirty for the government, and what he and his coworkers believe is for missles, instead of what their being told is for weather satilites (the gov makes weather satilites?). Basically what he did 6 months ago was learn how radiation effects circuitry and how to get around the radiation as much as possible, sorry I cant help you more than this but try googling it, theres bound to be something.

 

[f95toli]

What do you mean by "electrical related concerns"?

Radiation might be a problem but I really can't think of anything else.
It is cold at 60,000 ft, but whether or not that is a problem depends on what components you are using and how much heat is generated by the circuit itself.

 

[Qacer]

We will be working in the stratosphere region. So far, I found out that there is a temperature variation when it starts getting to the middle region. But as far as radiation effects, it's not that much of a concern because the ozone layer on top of the stratosphere absorbs most of the UV radiation from the sun.

 

[The Boston Dangler]

Having been to space, I can say it was indeed cold. I had to roll up the window. The electricity stayed on the whole time.

 

[JAGedlion]

A big concern for IC's on space missions are not so much the electrical characteristics but the actual pakage chracteristics. The darastic lower pressure and high heat upon reentry (takeoff too?) means that imperfections can prove disaterouse. Air bubbles etc can literally tear the thing apart let alone simply ruin a conductor or transistor. But thats more of a concern for the QC guys than the EE's.

I would imagine on the electrical side of things you would have to be concerned about cold/hot temperatures because they will affect resistance.

 

[pm]

Originally posted by: Qacer
We will be working in the stratosphere region. So far, I found out that there is a temperature variation when it starts getting to the middle region. But as far as radiation effects, it's not that much of a concern because the ozone layer on top of the stratosphere absorbs most of the UV radiation from the sun.

Soft error rates from high-energy cosmic radation should go up quite a bit. There's a 10x increase in SER going from sea-level to 10,000 ft. My advice is if the device will be up there for a while (more than a few hours), make sure that you are prepared for SER random-failures and make sure the device is fault-tolerant and that large memory arrays are self-checking.

 

[Peter]

In a nutshell: Radiation, lack of airflow, condensation. You need error-correcting everything, conduction cooling paired with low power consumption, and possibly coating.

 

[dakels]

If you are producing something I assume you have to follow some sort of standards such as ANSI.
You may want to start there to see what general expectations your equipment must meet and of course more expectations will be given to you by your client.

ANSI aerospace electronics standards

http://www.ansi.org/

edit: my link might not be working. Just go to ansi.org and search for "aerospace"
Then just do a find in your browser for electronics and you should see one of the main aerospace electronic standards documents.

edit2: fixed link

btw I am really curious as to what device is working in the stratosphere... No planes fly just below the ozone layer (30 miles?) and it's too low for any satellites to my knowledge.