Testing of vapour chamber used in electronics cooling

Abstract

This paper presents experimental measurement of performance of a vapour chamber (VC), also known as a flat plate heat pipe, for electronics cooling. The vapour chamber, with square sides of 40 x 40mm and thickness of 3mm, was sandwiched between a heater block and a cooling plate located on the evaporator and the condenser surface respectively. The performance of the vapour chamber was investigated by determining the thermal resistance over a heat input range of 10 to 100W with the condenser held at constant temperature. Test results for two vapour chambers with sintered and mesh type wicks were presented, and then compared to results obtained from tests on identical solid copper samples of 1 and 3mm base thickness. The experimental results show that the vapour chamber with sintered wick material performed markedly better than solid copper base at high heat fluxes, with vapour chamber orientation having minimal effect. On the other hand, the vapour chamber with a mesh wick showed no improvement compared to the 3mm solid copper base and its performance decreased at high heat fluxes, particularly when operated against gravity. The test-rig set up as well as the experimental results will be presented in detail.