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Micro heat pipes are a promising option for the thermal management of microelectronic systems with high heat flux dissipation rates. A computational analysis is performed on wire-sandwiched micro heat pipes, a relatively new design of micro heat pipes, which utilizes an array of wires sandwiched between metallic plates to produce the flow channels. A transient one-dimensional model incorporating the longitudinal variations in the flow cross sections of the liquid and vapor media has been utilized, while developing the governing equations for the analysis. A fully implicit finite difference scheme is utilized to obtain solutions for the velocity, pressure and temperature distributions in the vapor and the liquid phases. The performance of the heat pipe has been obtained, with the effective thermal conductivity as the indicator, and extensive optimization studies have been performed with respect to the geometric parameters namely the length of the heat pipe sections, the diameter and pitch of the wires in the sandwiched structure, and operational parameters namely the heat input and the condenser heat transfer coefficient. The effects are correlated using a regression analysis, and further utilized in obtaining the optimal design of the micro heat pipe within a range of parameters. The analysis provides guidelines for the geometric design of wire-sandwiched micro heat pipes for heat dissipation from micro electronic chips, based on the results corresponding to the thermal management conditions encountered in such applications.

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