Cooling Management of Highly Powered Chips Packed in an Insulated Cavity Filled with a Phase Change Material

Abstract

This work describes and analyses a novel computer's thermal management system based on a phase change material (PCM) heat storage reservoir. The proposed heat sink consists of a PCM filled enclosure heated by substrate-mounted protruding heat sources (micro processors). PCMs, characterized by high energy storage density and small transition temperature interval, are able to store a high amount of generated heat; which provides a passive cooling of microprocessors. The advantage of this cooling strategy is that the phase change materials are able to absorb a high amount of generated heat without energizing the fan. The proposed strategy is suitable and efficient for situations where the cooling by air convection is not practical (thermal control of recent multiprocessors computers, for example). The problem is modelled as, two dimensional, time dependent and convection–dominated phenomena. A finite volume numerical approach is developed and used to simulate the physical details of the problem. This approach is based on the enthalpy method which is traditionally used to track the motion of the liquid/solid front and obtain the temperature and velocity profiles in the liquid phase. The study gives an instruction on the presentation of PCM heat sink used for cooling management of recent computers. Numerical investigations have been conducted in order to examine the impact of several parameters on the thermal behaviour and efficiency of the proposed PCM-based heat sink. Correlation for the secured operating time (time required by the heat sink before reaching the critical temperature, Tcr) is developed.