Characterization of a Heat Sink with Embedded Heat Pipe with Variable Heat Dissipating Source Placement for Power Electronics Applications

The present study is to investigate the heat spreading characteristics of an embedded heat pipe heat sink versus a heat sink without embedded heat pipe. Experimental and numerical studies have been conducted to investigate the placement effect of a heat dissipating source applied to horizontally orientated heat sinks. The numerical analysis was verified with experimental testing. For the experimental testing, a heater block was designed to represent a standard IGBT module size and was applied at three different placements on the base plate of the heat sink. The three different placements for the heater block were considered with respect to the inlet air velocity direction (leading, middle and trailing edge). It was concluded that the performance of the heat sink with embedded heat pipes was not significantly affected by the placement of the heater block. The thermal modeling software Qfin 6.1 was used for the numerical analysis. Modeling of the heat pipe with high conductivity solid core assumption was also compared the standard vapor core model available in Qfin6.1. The numerical simulations results for the heat sink with and without embedded heat pipe were in good agreement with the experimental results.