Numerical investigation on thermal performance of vapor chambers with porous support structures

Abstract As an efficient two-phase heat sink, the vapor chamber has important application value in the thermal management of electronic equipment. This study implements a multiphysics-coupled 3D numerical framework through the COMSOL Multiphysics® simulation platform to characterize the thermal-fluid behavior of phase-change vapor chambers, and three different porous media support column models were designed, including A model, Z-1 model, and Z-2 model, to assess their impact on the vapor chamber’s thermal transport efficiency. The research focuses on the effects of three parameters: a, b, and L on heat transfer performance. The analysis shows that the heat dissipation performance of the Z-2 model is significantly better than that of the Z-1 model. With the increase of a value, the average temperature of the vapor chamber decreases significantly, while the effect of the b value on the temperature is not obvious. When a=4 mm, the average temperature of the Z model is significantly lower than that of the A model. The optimized elliptical support column design performs well in improving heat transfer efficiency.