Fundamental Experiments and Numerical Analyses on Heat Transfer Characteristics of a Vapor Chamber

(Effect of Heat Source Size)

Abstract

A vapor chamber is used as a novel heat spreader to cool high-performance MPUs (microprocessor units). The vapor chamber is placed between small heat sources and a large heat sink. This paper describes the effect of heat source size on the heat transfer characteristics of the vapor chamber. First, by the experiments, the effect of heat source size on the temperature distribution of the vapor chamber is investigated, and the validity of the mathematical model of the vapor chamber is confirmed. Secondly, by the numerical analyses, the effect of heat source size on the thermal resistances inside the vapor chamber is discussed. It is found that the heat source size greatly affects the thermal resistance of the evaporator section inside the vapor chamber. Although the thermal resistance is hardly affected by the heat generation rate and the heat flux of the heat source, it increases as the heat source becomes smaller.