Electronics cooling

About: Electronics cooling is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 1135 publications have been published within this topic receiving 17608 citations.

Development of Compact Models for Electronics Cooling: Using the Multigrid Operator to Generate Reduced-Order Description of Devices

Abstract: The need for compact models for ICs is a well-recognized problem in electronics cooling simulations of systems containing multiple PCBs and many devices per board. The disparate length scales inherent in the problem and the necessity of resolving these size scales renders the computational problem intractable. Many resistance-capacitance (RC) network compact models have been proposed in the literature. We present a methodology to automatically construct both the topology and characteristics of the reduced-order or compact models of devices (primarily Integrated Circuit (IC) packages) for use in system-level simulations using the multigrid operator. The multigrid technique has been extensively used over the past 20 years to accelerate the solution of liner systems. In addition to automatically generating both the RC network topology and its values, the procedure is general enough to be applicable for complex IC device types like Multi-Chip Modules (MCMs), stack up dies, distributed sources on the die, DC-DC converters and devices such as hard disk drives.Copyright © 2003 by ASME

High heat flux cooling for spacecraft electronics

Abstract: An experimental investigation of flow boiling in a curved channel has been performed to ascertain its value in electronics cooling applications. Results have been obtained for flow velocities of 1 to 5 m/s and subcooling of 0.5 to 40 K. These results were compared to those of straight channel under identical velocity and subcooling conditions. The critical heat flux of the curved channel was found to be greater than that of the straight channel. In some cases the increase was found to be marginal, however. An unexplained temperature shift in the nucleate boiling regime was experienced during some experiments. Because this shift only occurred for the first test of the day, it is thought to be related to the incipience phenomenon often experienced in pool boiling experiments. Finally, true incipience overshoot and nucleate boiling regime hysteresis were found to be negligible.

A simulation of evaporating meniscus-driven flow for application to electronics cooling design

Abstract: This paper presents a mathematical model for the simulation of evaporating meniscus-driven dielectric coolant flow in a channel between two parallel flat plates, one of which is heated and simulates the I.C. chip surface to be cooled, and the other is assumed to be insulated for convenience of modelling. The model comprises of the energy and momentum equations which incorporate the Young-Laplace equation for the driving force. The coolant rise length, velocity and capillary number are obtained for various coolants at different heat fluxes and channel inclinations. The data generated give the domain of feasibility of the concept and may be useful in the thermal design of electronics cooling.

Startup characteristics of an ammonia loop heat pipe with a rectangular evaporator

Abstract: Flat-plate loop heat pipe (FLHP) is a passive two-phase heat transfer device. Comparing with traditional LHP with a cylindrical evaporator, it can be directly connected to a flat heat source without the employment of a saddle, which can effectively reduce the system thermal resistance and enhance the temperature uniformity. In this work, a stainless steel-ammonia FLHP was developed, and extensive experiments have been conducted to investigate its startup characteristics with the evaporator in the horizontal and vertical positions. Experimental results show that the FLHP exhibits excellent startup performance. It can successfully start up at a small heat load as low as 2 W with no obvious temperature overshoot. In a wide power range of 5–35 W, the FLHP generally starts up in only one situation, much simpler than the startup of a LHP with a cylindrical evaporator. For this rectangular evaporator, the heat leak from the evaporator to the compensation chamber (CC) becomes very small. As a result, the vapor can easily exit the condenser in most cases in the power range of 5–35 W, leading to a 100% utilization efficiency of the condenser and the resultant satisfactory thermal performance of the FLHP. In addition, the startup performance and the system thermal resistance of the FLHP are insensitive to the evaporator orientation, promising great application potential in future electronics cooling.

Thermal analysis of proposed heat sink design under natural convection for the thermal management of electronics

Abstract: The rapid development in the field of electronics has led to high power densities and miniaturization of electronic packages. Because of the compact size of electronic devices, the rate of heat dissipation has increased drastically. Due to this reason, the air-cooling system with a conventional heat sink is insufficient to remove large quantity of heat. A novel macro-channel ‘L-shaped heat sink’ is proposed and analyzed to overcome this problem. The thermal resistance and fluid flow behavior under natural convection, of the novel and conventional air-cooled heat sink designs, are analyzed. Governing equations are discretized and solved across the computational domain of the heat sink, with three-dimensional conjugate heat transfer model. Numerical results are validated through experimentation. The effect of parameters i.e., fin height, number of fins and heat sink size, on the thermal resistance and fluid flow are reported. Examination of these parameters provide a better physical understanding from energy conservation and management view point. Substantial increase in the thermal performance is noted for the novel ‘L-shaped heat sink’ compared to the conventional design.