Feasibility assessment of manufacturing of heat sink using additive manufacturing techniques

Abstract

A heat sink is a heat dissipating unit that removes heat with the help of an infusing heat mechanism to a fluidic environment, often atmospheric ambiance or a heat transfer agent where it is imparted away from the system, thereby permitting the control of the device. Commonly the heat sink is manufactured by a process such as forging, casting, stampings, etc. with rectangular or circular fins. The mechanism of heat transfer is mainly relying on the surface area of fins. In this work, the fins are provided with some corrugation to increase the area of transfer of heat. The design change in the rectangular fin makes it complex to produce in conventional methods such as forging, casting stamping, etc. So, the heat sink is manufactured by utilizing 3D printing additive technology. The 3D additive printing design is developed with the Solid works software and the Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) analysis is done for finding the optimized design. Then the heat sink is fabricated by powder bed fusion technique. The feasibility study of the fabricated heat sink is done through digital microscopic images, dimensional analysis, roughness measurement, weight analysis and the possibility of porosity by finding the density of the printed material. The microscopic image shows that the surface of the fins has an irregular shape such as crushed foil paper. The dimensional analysis of the fin by profile projector gives the fin thickness variation from 0.98 mm to 1.2 mm. The roughness measurement gives center line average roughness, Ra = 6.910 μm, Root mean square method roughness, Rq = 9.08 μm and Ten point method roughness, Rz = 36.05 μm. Weighing of the specimen shows that the additive-manufactured heat sink has less weight compared to the conventional one.