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Experimental investigation of a novel heat spreader with smooth and multi-structure surfaces

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Abstract

The vapour chambers are used in the electronic cooling applications to avoid the hot spots that result from the centralizing of the heat in the electronic components. The major effort of this study is to establish a standard vapour chamber design and evaluate its performance with different designs: with circular and square grooves of different sizes and with no grooves. Accordingly, two different sizes of the vapour chamber (100 × 100 × 3 mm3 and 90 × 90 × 3 mm3) were designed and their performance was evaluated experimentally. Moreover, five cold plates having different sizes of grooves (no groove, groove with 5 mm diameter, groove with 10 mm diameter, 30 × 30 mm2 square groove, and 60 × 60 mm2 square groove) were designed to test the effect of the groove size on the performance and the thermal resistances of the cold plate. The test results showed that the axial thermal resistances and the total thermal resistances decreased with increasing the groove size. In addition, it was investigated that the thermal resistances decrease with increasing the groove size, however, at a certain groove size (a circular groove with a diameter of 10 mm), the thermal resistance is the lowest. Therefore, the groove with 10 mm diameter was the optimum design that ensured the better enhancement in the performance of the vapour chamber.

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Abbreviations

A:

Cross-sectional area of copper heater block (m2)

k:

Thermal conductivity (W/m oC)

L:

Length (m)

\({L}_{i}\) :

The distance from the measuring thermocouple to the heater block (m)

q:

Heat transfer rate (W)

\({Q}_{W}\) :

Volume flow rate (litter/min)

\({R}_{a}\) :

The axial thermal resistance (oC /W)

\({R}_{s}\) :

The diffusion thermal resistance (oC /W)

\({R}_{Total}\) :

Total thermal resistance (oC /W)

\({R}_{vc}\) :

Vapor Chamber Thermal Resistance (oC /W)

\({T}_{a}\) :

Ambient temperature (oC)

\({T}_{avg}\) :

The average temperature (oC) of the four corners (\({T}_{vc, 1}, {T}_{vc, 2}, {T}_{vc, 3}, {T}_{vc, 4}, {T}_{vc, 5}\)) on the surface of the cold plate

\({T}_{c}\) :

Center point temperature of below the vapour chamber(oC)

\({T}_{vc}\) :

Center point temperature on the top surface of vapour chamber (oC)

(\({T}_{w, avg}\)):

The average water temperature of the cold plate outlet

\({T}_{w, in}\) :

Water inlet temperature (oC)

\({T}_{w, out}\) :

Water outlet temperature (oC)

a:

Ambient temperature

avg:

Average

c:

Centre point

in:

Inlet

out:

Outlet

w:

Water

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Mechanical Engineering, National Central University, 320 Jhong-Li, Taoyuan, Taiwan

    Mudhafar A. H. Mudhafar & Zhang Lu

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  1. Mudhafar A. H. Mudhafar
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  2. Zhang Lu
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Correspondence to Mudhafar A. H. Mudhafar.

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Mudhafar, M.H., Lu, Z. Experimental investigation of a novel heat spreader with smooth and multi-structure surfaces. Heat Mass Transfer 58, 1879–1896 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00231-022-03187-1

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