THERMAL CONTROL OF ELECTRONIC EQUIPMENT BY HEAT PIPES

In the frame of the BRITE-EURAM european programme (KHIEPCOOL project) , a literature survey on the main heat pipe and micro heat pipe techno logies developed for thermal control of electronic equipment has been carried out. The conventional heat pipes are cylindrical, flat or bell ow tubes, using wicks or axial grooves as capillary structures. In the field of micro heat pipes, three and four corner tubes have been deve loped. The pipes are mounted on single chips, in-line chip arrays or i ntegrated into the component interconnection substrate. The best perfo rmances were achieved with Pleach's axially grooved fiat miniature hea t pipe [1], which is able to transfer a heat flux of about 60 W.cm(-2) . Theoretical models have shown that the performance of micro heat pip e arrays increase with increasing tube diameter, decreasing tube lengt h and increasing heat pipe density. The heat pipe technologies are cla ssified and compared according to their geometry and location in the s ystem. A list of about 150 references, classified according to their s ubjects, is presented. (C) Elsevier, Paris.