Heat pipe inspection system for thermal management in electronic circuit

Abstract

This research paper proposes the inspection system of heat pipe cooling for electronic devices, such as CPU in personal computer, laptop computer and so on. The inspection system is an essential part in production process of heat pipes CPU cooler. To ensure the high quality product, a 100% quality checking is taken into account. Generally, heat pipe inspection system is conducted by human ears that may cause errors. Therefore, this work proposes the automatic inspection system using the concept on the basis of sensing Acoustic Emission (AE) signals. In the experiment, the AE sensor was mounted on the heat pipe surface to measure the vibration degree sent to computer. The signal of acoustic vibration was analyzed by windows operating system using LABVIEW and NI USB-9233 data acquisition module. Threshold level of noise vibration shown in the program could identify quality or defect of the heat pipe cooling operation. The performances evaluation is satisfactorily achieved with the proposed system illustrated by the testing of the known condition product. This research could potentially help improving the quality assurance operation of heat pipe cooling inspection system in any industries.