Multi-artery heat-pipe spreader: Lateral liquid supply

Recent Advances in Vapor Chamber Transport Characterization for High-Heat-Flux Applications

“…Unlike the columnar arteries, a set of lateral arteries converged toward the center of the wick structure, again with the purpose of providing distributed liquid flow to increase the evaporation regime dryout limit of a thin sintered monolayer. For this feeding geometry, the thermal resistance was observed to be relatively constant up to a heat flux of ~350 W/cm 2 , attributed to a relatively constant liquid level in the monolayer at which the meniscus shape provides maximum capillary pressure [41]. Unlike the columnar arteries, for which sudden dryout was observed, operation after partial dryout was maintained up to 580 W/cm 2 via lateral arteries (albeit at an increased thermal resistance).…”

“…Dhillon et al [156] investigated evaporation from micron-size rectangular channels representative of a micro-columnated porous silicon wick design. Hwang et al [41] employed this local thermal nonequilibrium modeling approach to evaluate the effective thermal resistance of evaporation from a monolayer of spherical particles. Bodla et al [157] described the evaporative resistance imposed by a realistic sintered powder wick via microtomography-based direct simulation.…”

“…It may be inferred that the optimum pattern or groove size is dependent on the wick thickness. A series of studies by Hwang et al [40,41] investigated the use of novel liquid return structures to sustain evaporation from a thin monolayer of 60 μm particles for cooling a 10 mm × 10 mm hot spot. The proposed structures were tested in a vapor chamber device with a condenser surface temperature fixed at 40 °C.…”

“…A second novel liquid-feeding geometry was evaluated by Hwang et al [41]. Unlike the columnar arteries, a set of lateral arteries converged toward the center of the wick structure, again with the purpose of providing distributed liquid flow to increase the evaporation regime dryout limit of a thin sintered monolayer.…”

“…Unlike the columnar arteries, for which sudden dryout was observed, operation after partial dryout was maintained up to 580 W/cm 2 via lateral arteries (albeit at an increased thermal resistance). This was due to the increased lateral inlet flow area to the monolayer provided by the lateral arteries [41]. Further design iterations revealed that an increased number of distributed liquid arteries provided improved performance [42].…”