Abstract:With the rapid rising of heat flux and reduction of heat dissipating space of microelectronic devises, flattened sintered heat pipe has become an ideal conducting element of use in the electronic cooling field. A manufacturing technology named phase change flattening process is presented to fabricate the flattened grooved-sintered wick heat pipe (GSHP for short). Deformation geometry of flattened GSHP and the elasto-plastic deformation of flattening process are analyzed theoretically and verified by experiments. The results show that the vapor pressure inside sintered heat pipe during flattening process is determined by the saturated vapor pressure equation; the width and vapor area of flattened heat pipe change greatly as the flattening proceeds; the maximum equivalent strain distributes at the interface between wick and vapor in the flat section; the buckling phenomenon can be well eliminated when the flattening temperature reaches 480 K; phase change flattening punch load increases with flattening temperature and displacement.

Key words: heat pipe; wick; flattening; elasto-plastic deformation; buckling; vapor pressure