Numerical and experimental analysis of a heat-pipe-embedded printed circuit board for solid state lighting applications

Thermal management is one of the main issues for electronics cooling especially for tightly packaged PCBs that experience local heat generation. Thus, theoretical and experimental investigations have been conducted to predict thermal performance of a novel heat-pipe-embedded-PCB. First, plain heat-pipe is experimentally tested under various inclination angles and validated by theoretical and numerical calculations. Flattened heat-pipes have been embedded into PCB prototypes made of polymer and aluminum and have been tested for similar experimental parameters; they have shown a decrease in compared with conventional heat pipe. Accordingly, reduction of approximately 50% is achieved for both embedded PCB prototypes.