Thermal Optimization of Plate-Fin Heat Sinks With Variable Fin Thickness

Author(s):  
Dong-Kwon Kim ◽  
Jaehoon Jung ◽  
Sung Jin Kim

In the present paper, we conducted thermal optimization of plate-fin heat sink with fin thickness varying in the vertical direction. The model based on volume averaging theory (VAT) was used for this optimization. It is shown that the thermal resistance of plate-fin heat sink is reduced by allowing the fin thickness to increase in the vertical direction. In the case of water-cooled heat sink, the thermal resistance decreases up to about 20%. The amount of the reduction increases as either pumping power increases or the length of heat sink decreases.

Author(s):  
Duckjong Kim ◽  
Sung Jin Kim

In the present work, a novel compact modeling method based on the volume-averaging technique and its application to the analysis of fluid flow and heat transfer in pin fin heat sinks are presented. The pin fin heat sink is modeled as a porous medium. The volume-averaged momentum and energy equations for fluid flow and heat transfer in pin fin heat sinks are obtained using the local volume-averaging method. The permeability, the Ergun constant and the interstitial heat transfer coefficient required to solve these equations are determined experimentally. To validate the compact model proposed in this paper, 20 aluminum pin fin heat sinks having a 101.43 mm × 101.43 mm base size are tested with an inlet velocity ranging from 1 m/s to 5 m/s. In the experimental investigation, the heat sink is heated uniformly at the bottom. Pressure drop and heat transfer characteristics of pin fin heat sinks obtained from the porous medium approach are compared with experimental results. Upon comparison, the porous medium approach is shown to predict accurately the pressure drop and heat transfer characteristics of pin fin heat sinks. Finally, surface porosities of the pin fin heat sink for which the thermal resistance of the heat sink is minimal are obtained under constraints on pumping power and heat sink size. The optimized pin fin heat sinks are shown to be superior to the optimized straight fin heat sinks in thermal performance by about 50% under the same constraints on pumping power and heat sink size.


Author(s):  
T. J. John ◽  
B. Mathew ◽  
H. Hegab

In this paper the authors are studying the effect of introducing S-shaped pin-fin structures in a micro pin-fin heat sink to enhance the overall thermal performance of the heat sinks. For the purpose of evaluating the overall thermal performance of the heat sink a figure of merit (FOM) term comprising both thermal resistance and pumping power is introduced in this paper. An optimization study of the overall performance based on the pitch distance of the pin-fin structures both in the axial and the transverse direction, and based on the curvature at the ends of S-shape fins is also carried out in this paper. The value of the Reynolds number of liquid flow at the entrance of the heat sink is kept constant for the optimization purpose and the study is carried out over a range of Reynolds number from 50 to 500. All the optimization processes are carried out using computational fluid dynamics software CoventorWARE™. The models generated for the study consists of two sections, the substrate (silicon) and the fluid (water at 278K). The pin fins are 150 micrometers tall and the total structure is 500 micrometer thick and a uniform heat flux of 500KW is applied to the base of the model. The non dimensional thermal resistance and nondimensional pumping power calculated from the results is used in determining the FOM term. The study proved the superiority of the S-shaped pin-fin heat sinks over the conventional pin-fin heat sinks in terms of both FOM and flow distribution. S-shaped pin-fins with pointed tips provided the best performance compared to pin-fins with straight and circular tips.


Author(s):  
Feng Zhou ◽  
Nicholas Hansen ◽  
Ivan Catton

A plate-pin fin heat sink (PPFHS) is composed of a plate fin heat sink (PFHS) and some pin fins planted between the flow channels. Just as the other kinds of heat sinks, it is a hierarchical multilevel device with many parameters required for its description. Volume Averaging Theory (VAT) is used to rigorously cast the point-wise conservation of energy, momentum and mass equations into a form that represents the thermal and hydraulic properties of the plate-pin fin (porous media) morphology and to describe the hierarchical nature of the heat sink. Closure for the upper level is obtained using VAT to describe the lower level. At the lower level, the media is described by a representative elementary volume (REV). Closure terms in the VAT equations are related to a local friction factor and a heat transfer coefficient of the REV. The terms in the closure expressions are complex and relating experimental data to the closure terms resulting from VAT is difficult. In this work, we model the plate-pin fin heat sink based on Volume Averaging Theory and use CFD to obtain detailed solutions of flow through an element of PPFHS and use these results to evaluate the closure terms needed for a fast running VAT based code. The VAT based code can then be used to solve the heat transfer characteristics of the higher level heat sink. The objective is to show how plate-pin fin heat sinks can be modeled as porous media based on Volume Averaging Theory and how CFD can be used in place of a detailed, often formidable, experimental effort.


2004 ◽  
Vol 126 (3) ◽  
pp. 342-350 ◽  
Author(s):  
Duckjong Kim ◽  
Sung Jin Kim ◽  
Alfonso Ortega

In this work, a novel compact modeling method based on the volume-averaging technique is presented. Its application to the analysis of fluid flow and heat transfer in pin fin heat sinks are further analyzed. The pin fin heat sink is modeled as a porous medium. The volume-averaged momentum and energy equations for fluid flow and heat transfer in pin fin heat sinks are obtained by using the local volume-averaging method. The permeability, the Ergun constant, and the interstitial heat transfer coefficient required to solve these equations are determined experimentally and correlations for them are presented. To validate the compact model proposed in this paper, 20 aluminum pin fin heat sinks having a 101.43 mm×101.43 mm base size are tested with an inlet velocity ranging from 1 m/s to 5 m/s. In the experimental investigation, the heat sink is heated uniformly at the bottom. Pressure drop and heat transfer characteristics of pin fin heat sinks obtained from the porous medium approach are compared with experimental results. Upon comparison, the porous medium approach is shown to predict accurately the pressure drop and heat transfer characteristics of pin fin heat sinks. Finally, for minimal thermal resistance, the optimum surface porosities of the pin fin heat sink are obtained under constraints on pumping power and heat sink size. The optimized pin fin heat sinks are shown to be superior to the optimized straight fin heat sinks in thermal performance by about 50% under the same constraints on pumping power and heat sink size.


2005 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 122-131
Author(s):  
Pradeep Hegde ◽  
K.N. Seetharamu ◽  
P.A. Aswatha Narayana ◽  
Zulkifly Abdullah

Stacked microchannel heat sinks with two-phase flow have been analyzed using the Finite Element Method (FEM). The present method is a simple and practical approach for analyzing the thermal performance of single or multi layered microchannel heat sinks with either single or two-phase flow. A unique 10 noded finite element is used for the channel discretization. Two-phase thermal resistance, pressure drop and pumping power of single, double and triple stack microchannel heat sinks are determined at different base heat fluxes ranging from 150 W/cm2 to 300 W/cm2. The temperature distribution along the length of the microchannel is also plotted. It is found that stacked microchannel heat sinks with two-phase flow are thermally more efficient than two-phase single layer microchannel heat sinks, both in terms of thermal resistance and pumping power requirements. It is observed that the thermal resistance of a double stack microchannel heat sink with two-phase flow is about 40% less than that for a single stack heat sink. A triple stack heat sink yields a further 20% reduction in the thermal resistance and at the same time operates with about 30% less pumping power compared to a single stack heat sink. The effect of channel aspect ratio on the thermal resistance and pressure drop of stacked microchannel heat sinks with two-phase flow are also studied.


Author(s):  
T. J. John ◽  
B. Mathew ◽  
H. Hegab

The need for dissipating heat from microsystems has increased drastically in the last decade. Several methods of heat dissipation using air and liquids have been proposed by many studies, and pin-fin micro heat sinks are one among them. Researchers have developed several effective pin-fin structures for use in heat sinks, but not much effort has been taken towards the optimization of profile and dimensions of the pin-fin. In this paper the authors studied the effect of different pin-fin shapes on the thermal resistance and pressure drop in a specific micro heat-sink. Optimization subjected to two different constraints is studied in this paper. The first optimization is subjected to constant flow rate and the second one is subjected to constant pressure drop. Both optimization processes are carried out using computer simulations generated using COVENTORWARE™. Two of the best structures from each of these optimization studies are selected and further analysis is performed for optimizing their structure dimensions such as width, height and length. A section of the total micro heat-sink is modeled for the initial optimization of the pin-fin shape. The model consists of two sections, the substrate and the fluid. Six different shapes: square, circle, rectangle, triangle, oval and rhombus were analyzed in the initial optimization study. Preliminary tests were conducted using the first model described above for a flow rate of 0.6ml/min. The non dimensional overall thermal resistance of the heat sink, and the nondimensional pumping power was calculated from the results. A figure of merit (FOM) was developed using the nondimensional thermal resistance and nondimensional pumping power for each structure with different pin-fin shapes. Smaller the value of FOM better the performance of the heat sink. The study revealed that the circle and ellipse structures have the best performance and the rectangle structure had the worst performance at low flow rates. At high flow rates rectangular and square structures have the best performance.


2021 ◽  
pp. 65-65
Author(s):  
Mostafa Abdelmohimen ◽  
Khalid Almutairi ◽  
Mohamed Elkotb ◽  
Hany Abdelrahman ◽  
Salem Algarni

Cutting fins of the plate heat sinks into multi-numbers of slides instead of one slide fin is a technique to improve the performance of the heat sink. One, two, three, and four slides have been studied numerically. The slides have been arranged in staggered arrangement. The study has been carried out on two different flow directions (impinging and parallel). The performance of the heat sink under the studied conditions has been represented through calculation of heat sink effectiveness, thermal resistance, pressure drop, pumping power, and Nusselt number. The studied range of Reynolds number is from 1333 to 5334. The results show that parallel flow gives lower thermal resistance than impinging flow for all studied cases. The pumping power required for high Reynolds number in case of parallel flow increases by around 155% with case-4 (four slides) as compared by case-1 (one slide). While it is slightly affected in case of impinging flow, using three slides with impinging flow represents an acceptable decrement in thermal resistance with low change in the required pumping power. In case of parallel flow, the resulting change in the heat sink performance, as the number of slides increases, is not proportional to the large increase in the pumping power.


Author(s):  
Nico Setiawan Effendi ◽  
Kyoung Joon Kim

A computational study is conducted to explore thermal performances of natural convection hybrid fin heat sinks (HF HSs). The proposed HF HSs are a hollow hybrid fin heat sink (HHF HS) and a solid hybrid fin heat sink (SHF HS). Parametric effects such as a fin spacing, an internal channel diameter, a heat dissipation on the performance of HF HSs are investigated by CFD analysis. Study results show that the thermal resistance of the HS increases while the mass-multiplied thermal resistance of the HS decreases associated with the increase of the channel diameter. The results also shows the thermal resistance of the SHF HS is 13% smaller, and the mass-multiplied thermal resistance of the HHF HS is 32% smaller compared with the pin fin heat sink (PF HS). These interesting results are mainly due to integrated effects of the mass-reduction, the surface area enhancement, and the heat pumping via the internal channel. Such better performances of HF HSs show the feasibility of alternatives to the conventional PF HS especially for passive cooling of LED lighting modules.


2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Krzysztof Posobkiewicz ◽  
Krzysztof Górecki

Purpose The purpose of this study is to investigate the validation of the usefulness of cooling systems containing Peltier modules for cooling power devices based on measurements of the influence of selected factors on the value of thermal resistance of such a cooling system. Design/methodology/approach A cooling system containing a heat-sink, a Peltier module and a fan was built by the authors and the measurements of temperatures and thermal resistance in various supply conditions of the Peltier module and the fan were carried out and discussed. Findings Conclusions from the research carried out answer the question if the use of Peltier modules in active cooling systems provides any benefits comparing with cooling systems containing just passive heat-sinks or conventional active heat-sinks constructed of a heat-sink and a fan. Research limitations/implications The research carried out is the preliminary stage to asses if a compact thermal model of the investigated cooling system can be formulated. Originality/value In the paper, the original results of measurements and calculations of parameters of a cooling system containing a Peltier module and an active heat-sink are presented and discussed. An influence of power dissipated in the components of the cooling system on its efficiency is investigated.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document