Numerical studies on heating performance of phase change material based heat sink with internal fin

Abstract

Mobile electronic devices are becoming increasingly common and also getting smaller in sizes, but packed with higher power dissipation from their electronics components and the temperature became very high. Phase change materials are used along with the heat sink for effective cooling. PCMs absorbs large amount of energy during their phase change at constant temperature. In this paper, numerically investigate the performance of heat sink with and without plate fin filled with PCM. For that heat sink is modelled in the average dimension of smart phone (130 × 66mm). PCM used here is n-eicosane and is placed inside a heat sink made of aluminium. Aluminium acts as thermal conductivity enhancer, as the thermal conductivity of PCM is very low. Further two more models are created in the plate finned heat sink by providing one and two gaps in the plate fin. For this study, 3mm thickness of heater of dimension 110×46mm is provided at the bottom of heat sink. Plate fin thickness is 4mm and the analysis is carried for 5W supply. The shows that heat sink with PCM shows better temperature absorption than without PCM. As the amount of PCM increases heat absorption rate also increases. Also the plate finned heat sink shows less wall temperature than unfinned heat sink. The liquid fraction also increased for finned heat sink. Modified heat sink can accommodate 1 to 2% more PCM without change in liquid fraction and decrease in temparature.