Experimental and CFD study of micro heat sinks: Different shapes and arrangements

Abstract

Heat dissipation from electronic devices is a crucial demand to keep their rated performance. Finned heat sinks are one of the efficient routes to dissipate the generated heat. This paper studies the performance of forced convective heat transfer from different shapes and arrangements of micro heat sinks. Ten designs of the micro heat sinks, included novel designs of micro fins, have been experimentally and numerically investigated in a rectangular air flow channel with Reynolds number ranging from 2000 to 11000. Laser etching technique has had been used in manufacturing the micro heat sinks while the CFD analysis have been conducted finite element method implemented in COMSOL Multiphysics. Results show that the proposed designs can significantly improve the fluid dynamic through the micro heat sink surface and thus the heat transfer performance. The enhancement in thermal transmittance because fluid-wall interaction has been proven to be effective in many designs in this study without relying on the contribution of the increase in the surface area. Therefore, this study provides significant rules to the design of micro-structured heat sinks for enhancing the heat transfer performance.