Numerical Study of Flattened Miniature Heat Pipe with Hybrid Porous Wick and Double Heat Sources

Designing flattened miniature heat pipes (FMHPs) for electronic devices is a challenging issue due to high heat flux and limited heat dissipation space. It requires understanding the combined effects of the sintered-grooved wick structure, double heat sources, and flat thickness on heat pipes' thermal efficiency. Therefore, the aim of this study is to numerically investigate the effects of the FMHP with a hybrid wick on the thermal performance of its double heat sources acting as the CPU and GPU in notebook PCs. A transient ۳D finite volume method was used to solve the governing equations and assisted boundary conditions. The cylindrical heat pipe with a ۲۰۰ mm length and ۶ mm outside diameter is flattened into ۲, ۲.۵, ۳, and ۴ mm final thicknesses (FT). The obtained results show that the final critical thicknesses with the lowest thermal resistance are ۲.۵ and ۳ mm for hybrid and grooved wick structures, respectively. Therefore, FMHP with hybrid wicks can be flattened about ۸% more. Hybrid wick structures have the best effect on FMHP thermal performance at FT=۲.۵ mm

Keywords:

Flattened heat pipe , hybrid wick , thermal resistance , numerical simulation