Least-Volume Optimization of Finned Heat Sinks for Burn-in Air-Cooling Solutions
With the development and increasing use of high-density components with their high power dissipation needs, electronic packages have required the investigation of innovative techniques for the efficient dissipation of heat. One prevalent method is the use of forced convection heat spreaders, called heat sinks, which are also widely used in Burn-In (BI) ovens. There are some contradictions remaining in recent research on modeling and Nusselt number correlations of heat sinks in forced air convection. This paper begins by reviewing past research for different finned heat sink geometries with and without bypass flow over the heat sinks. A new method called Least Volume Optimization is then proposed to analyze the thermal performance of finned heat sinks for BI air-cooling solutions. The analysis shows that the volumetric heat dissipation of a parallel plate fin heat sink is higher than that of a pin fin heat sink, based on an optimal fin geometry.