LED heat dissipation solution for lamps

Heat dissipation solution for LED lamps

LED offers exciting design opportunities, and all the talk about it is often hampered by the words: heat management. "When incandescent bulbs can consume heat through radiation, LED produce almost no infrared heat." "Said Michael Gershowitz, director of technology marketing for pry. Therefore, LED must heat through heat conduction, or there is a risk that the brightness, longevity, and color stability will weaken.

With the development of LED technology and lighting design, the thermal management strategy has been progressing and prospering. One of the things that has matured is passive heat dissipation, and of course other innovative technologies are constantly evolving.

Passive cooling

More than 90% of LED lamps use passive heat dissipation (it does not have any auxiliary functions to dissipate heat, and conducts heat conduction alone with the external environment). Under this strategy, the heat of the LED package is transmitted through direct physical contact through the high thermal conductivity radiator. "Aluminum -- usually made of a circular shape with fins -- is a standard material used for radiators because of its light, low cost and easy manufacture." Xicato strategic partner manager Christopher Reed said. At present, manufacturers prefer passive radiators because of their reliability. "Even if it's not exactly the same, they're not far off the first day of their 50,000 or 20 years." Reed said.

But even a proven solution can be improved. While designers optimize radiators by finning the thickness and spacing of fins, passive heat dissipation strategies also develop a new form - fin radiator. Unlike squeezed blades, which resemble an inverted round table with a large number of legs, LED devices stick to the surface of the table.

Active cooling

Active cooling, that is, with the aid of auxiliary functions (such as fan) to speed up the heat with the speed of air convection heat transfer, obviously increase fan strengthened the air convection, heat dissipation effect is higher than the passive radiator, but increased the more moving parts (fan、holder), cost increase; And the fan's noise problem has been difficult to solve, so the OEM has accepted the slow progress.

Mixed heat pipe

 Heat pipe technology, is a computer USES the mature heat dissipation mechanism, combined with the characteristics of both active and passive cooling scheme, in essence, heat pipe is made of metal tube sealing and filling liquid composition of thermal conductivity, it will heat away from the LED and sent to the remote system. Although due to the increase of heat source and radiator distance, the effectiveness of the system will be weakened, and the heat pipe still makes the whole parts different. "This separation is a great design opportunity." Gershowitz said. For example, the heat pipe inside a compact crane can transfer heat to a creative ceiling. "Designers can come up with some very attractive solutions." He said.

Figure: heat pipe technology

Bright future

   With the development of the technology of LED lighting industry and the constant input of designers from different countries,LED technology has become mature.The passive radiator occupies 80% of the LED heat dissipation market, In addition, the active radiator technology and the new technology exploration and breakthrough, I believe that LED heat dissipation problem will disappear from the discussion in the future. People talk about how to make LED lights better for life and how to improve people's quality of life better