Heat-spreading analysis of a heat sink base embedded with a heat pipe

A simplified model predicting the heat transfer performance of a heat sink base with a high thermal conductivity was developed. Numerical analysis was performed using the commercial software FLUENT. The investigation indicates that for heat sink bases with a high effective thermal conductivity, such as the base embedded with a typical heat pipe, the entire heat sink can be modeled as a flat plate with a uniform temperature and an effective convection heat transfer coefficient. This simplified model can be used to determine the heat transfer performance of a heat sink embedded with a typical heat pipe or vapor chamber. © 2010 Higher Education Press and Springer Berlin Heidelberg.