Heat Sink Design Research Articles

PENGARUH GEOMETRI DAN PENAMBAHAN JUMLAH SIRIP TERHADAP DISTRIBUSI TEMPERATUR HEAT SINK SEBAGAI ALTERNATIF PENDINGINAN PADA PIRANTI ELEKTRONIK

This study aims to determine the effect of the geometry shape of the copper material heat sink fins on the surface temperature distribution of the heat sink. The material used in this research is pure copper, the shape of the heat sink fins is made rippled with the addition of the number of fins 5, 6, and 7 and the input temperature is varied from 40 C to 80 C with airflow variations from 0.2 m/s to 1 m/s. The first step is to create a heat sink design with Autodesk Inventor. Then the plan is simulated with Autodesk CFD to solve the continuity, momentum, turbulence, and energy equations. Based on the method that has been carried out, it is found that the addition of variations in the number of fins affects the decrease in surface temperature. The highest temperature drop on fin 5 ripples is 24.1 C. The heat energy transfer rate increased by 0.4657 W. The convection heat transfer coefficient increased by 3.47 W/m²C. Nusselt number shows an increase of 271. Fin performance has increased efficiency by 63.4 %, and effectiveness by 1.61. The results of this study are expected to provide practical alternatives that can be widely adopted on a heatsink plate that is very promising for future thermal developments.

Thermal management of an asymmetrical wavy microchannel heat sink via Ag/water nanofluid

The ever-increasing demand for electronic systems to enhance their performance and processing speed has exponentially increased their heat generation, especially those containing microstructures with reduced surface area. Tackling these complex thermal management challenges creates an urgent need to design and model compact efficient cooling systems. In this investigation, a unique design of a microchannel heat sink with sinusoidal and absolute sinusoidal wavy walls with/without nanofluid is proposed. Heat transfer enhancement and fluid flow characteristics are numerically investigated by developing a two-dimensional finite element model for Reynolds numbers 5, 100, and 500. The periodicity of the wavy section and the different volume fractions of silver nanoparticles ranging from 0 to 4% in water are further considered. The entropy generation is analyzed using the Bejan number. The findings revealed that while the entropy generation rises in the absolute sinusoidal channel, it has a better heat transfer performance by 10.3%, 15.8%, and 16.6% than a straight microchannel for the ascending Reynolds numbers. Interestingly, the channel's heat transfer and thermal efficiency decrease when an unnecessary number of sinusoidal periods are used. The thermal efficiency improves by 3.35% compared to the straight microchannel by employing only one absolute sinusoidal wavelength along the channel.

Experimental investigation of forced convection heat transfer for different models of PPFHS heatsinks with different fin-pin spacing

Cooling of electronic components is one of the most important concerns of manufacturers. Using heatsinks with different models is one of the recommended methods for cooling. To compare 12 types of heatsinks, including 3 types of fin-pin heatsinks with rectangular pins, 3 types of fin-pin heatsinks with circular pins, 3 types of fin-pin heatsinks with conical pins, and 3 types of simple fin heatsinks in 5, 7, and 9 fin types regarding forced displacement heat transfer, an experiment was conducted. A special setup designed and built for these types of heatsinks was used to conduct the test. The setup had dimensions of 100 cm × 12 cm x 3 cm with an opening of 120 cm × 120 cm for placing a fan to create airflow with variable speeds and a place for placing the heatsink at the end of the wind tunnel under variable temperatures. The test results showed that the maximum error in the two experimental tests was 6 %. Also, the results showed that in all 4 types of heatsinks, 7-fin pin types had 4 to 20% lower thermal resistance and 20 to 100% higher convection heat transfer coefficient compared to the 5- and 9-fin pin types respectively. When comparing the heatsinks with the same number of fins, it was observed that the 7 and 9-fin types of heatsinks with conical fins have lower thermal resistance and higher convection heat transfer coefficient than other types of heatsinks with the same number of fins, The conical fins having more than 81 % convection heat transfer coefficient compared to the plate fin heatsink. It was also observed that in the 5-pin fin heatsink design, the plate-fin heat sink had the lowest amount of heat resistance due to its higher surface area with the flowing air current.

On the reticulate pattern and heat transfer performance of the topologically optimized microchannel heat sink

With the increasing integration of electronic devices, the rapid heat dissipation has become a key challenge for performance improvement. In this work, a 2D topology optimization for the channel pattern of a microchannel heat sink is conducted, and a novel reticulate pattern of optimized design of microchannel heat sink is found based on the theoretical and numerical analysis. This pattern has tertiary ranked reticulate channels resulting from the topology optimization, which are highly related to the convection heat transfer of fluid and the conduction in solid. The reticulate channels could significantly optimize the total number of channels in the heat sink, and accordingly regulate the flow distribution among the channels. The profiles of the temperature gradients and velocity exhibit high similarity in all reticulate channels, and lead to a synergistic enhancement of heat transfer. A full scale 3D simulation shows that the reticulate microchannel heat sink has better heat transfer performance than the other optimized heat sinks. With pressure drop of 1 kPa, the heat flux for the reticulate microchannel heat sink can reach up to 405 W/cm2, and its performance evaluation criteria (PEC) can reach up to 3.7.

Multi-objective reduced-order design optimization of single-phase liquid coolers for electronics

Thermal management using liquid cooled cold plates is a key enabler in modern electronic systems such as power converters and multi-chip arrays. Traditional cold plate designs are limited in their ability to handle the heterogeneous heat profiles in ever-larger modern multi-chip arrays requiring design optimization. This work demonstrates a design optimization method for liquid-cooled cold plates subjected to discrete heat dissipation profiles. We used reduced order performance modeling enabled by splitting the heat sink geometry onto a coarse grid with up to 50 elements each assigned with a simplified flow block such as a straight, elbow, or tee section. Correlations for thermal-fluidic performance metrics were used to obtain the pressure drop and surface temperature. Multi-objective design optimization focused on minimizing the pressure drop and temperature was broken down into layout and geometry optimization sub-steps. Layout optimization found the optimal flow path from inlet to outlet using a novel optimal path search method combining pathfinding algorithms with search on a random population. Geometry optimization solved for the dimensions of the coarse grid elements and the corresponding flow blocks using gradient based optimizers. We experimentally tested an aluminum water-cooled heat sink design generated by the reduced order optimization demonstrating a thermal resistance of 0.065 K/W. We compared the performance of our optimal designs with conventional and topology optimized cold plate designs to benchmark performance, computational cost, and computational time. Topology optimized designs showed a 22% reduction in average heated surface temperature for similar pressure drops. However, the computation time required to generate the topology optimized design was more than one order of magnitude higher than the reduced order method, requiring over 3,600 s to generate the optimal design. Our reduced order optimization in comparison provides optimal designs at computational timescales of 60 s.

An LBM study of multichannel flow boiling for electronic thermal management coupling flow instability mitigation

The rising heat dissipation requirement on electronic devices urges a more efficient and energy-saving cooling strategy to keep the equipment operating within a safe temperature range. Multichannel flow boiling provides a straightforward solution to this challenge due to enormous latent energy of vapor preventing heat accumulation. However, pressure drop minimization and flow instability mitigation should also be considered for optimizing multichannel design. Hence, a Lattice Boltzmann Method (LBM) study on multichannel flow boiling process is conducted to provide design-based suggestions. The effects of surface wettability, channel number, input heat flux, and inlet velocity on the two-phase flow characteristics, heat transfer coefficient enhancement, dimensionless pressure drop, and flow instability are compared to examine the overall performance. Non-dimensional pressure drop is proposed for comparison through dividing the pressure drop under two-phase flow stage by the pressure drop under single-phase flow stage. Results show that hydrophilic coating prevents the film boiling transition at high input heat flux and reduces the maximum temperature for safer electronic operation. Designing a dense channel array can enhance the overall HTC but also significantly increase flow instability on the inlet, leading to shorter pumping operation life. A hybrid design of multichannel with downstream microgap region is proposed, and results indicate great mitigation ability with the increase of gap length and inlet velocity. These findings offer an invaluable blueprint for multichannel heat sink design and reveal the mechanisms of flow boiling enhancement.

Optimal Design of Microchannel Heat Sink with Staggered Fan-Shaped Cavities and Ribs

In the present study, a three-dimensional numerical simulation is conducted to study the characteristics of fluid flow and heat transfer in a newly designed microchannel heat sink with fan-shaped cavities and ribs (MC-FCFR). The Reynolds number ranges from 147 to 736. A straight rectangular microchannel (MC-RC) is used as the baseline. The geometric parameters include the relative spacing θ, relative width α, and relative height β of the fan-shaped cavities and ribs. The overall performance index (OPI) of the MC-FCFR is evaluated in terms of the friction factor and Nusselt number. The OPI for the MC-FCFR with θ=3.56, α=1.63, and β=0.5 reaches 1.70.

Thermal performance enhancement of a micro-jet heat sink via parametric investigated micro pin fin arrays

The thermal management issue of high electronic chips with heat flux is one of the most challenge during the development of electronic devices. In this work, the design of micro pin fin arrays (MPFA) of micro-jet heat sink was proposed to achieve effective cooling of electronic chips. The MPFA with different cross-sectional shapes were used to improve the thermal performance of the heat sink. The results show that heat sink design with MPFA exhibit excellent cooling performance while consuming approximately the same amount of power as smooth surface. In addition, the hexagonal cross-section has better thermal performance, the temperature uniformity of the heating surface can be improved by up to 70 % and the average temperature can be reduced by 7–20K. Moreover, the manufacturing cost and cooling performance per unit cost were investigated and the results show that the square cross-section is the most commercially viable. Based on this, the square cross-section was parametrically studied, including the length to height ratio and fins number. It was founded that the heat sink exhibits better thermal performance for a length-to-height ratio of 1.4 and a number of fins of 169. Finally, the ultimate heat flux of the electronic chip can be withstood was also tested, and the optimal heat sink design can handle heat flux of 400W/cm2. Therefore, the heat sink with MPFA design can significantly improve the thermal performance without consuming the pump power, which can be used to cooling the high electronic chips with high heat flux in the future.

Design and Optimization of Heat Sinks for the Liquid Cooling of Electronics with Multiple Heat Sources: A Literature Review

This paper presents a detailed literature review on the thermal management issue faced by electronic devices, particularly concerning uneven heating and overheating problems. Special focus is given to the design and structural optimization of heat sinks for efficient single-phase liquid cooling. Firstly, the paper highlights the common presence and detrimental consequences of electronics overheating resulting from multiple heat sources, supported by various illustrative examples. Subsequently, the emphasis is placed on single-phase liquid cooling as one of the effective thermal management technologies for power electronics, as well as on the enhancement of heat transfer in micro/mini channel heat sinks. Various studies on the design and structural optimization of heat sinks are then analyzed and categorized into five main areas: (1) optimization of channel cross-section shape, (2) optimization of channel flow passage, (3) flow distribution optimization for parallel straight channel heat sinks, (4) optimization of pin-fin shape and arrangement, and (5) topology optimization of global flow configuration. After presenting a broad and complete overview of the state of the art, the paper concludes with a critical analysis of the methods and results from the literature and highlights the research perspectives and challenges in the field. It is shown that the issue of uneven and overheating caused by multiple heat sources, which is commonly observed in modern electronics, has received less attention in the literature compared to uniform or single-peak heating. While several design and structural optimization techniques have been implemented to enhance the cooling performance of heat sinks, topology optimization has experienced significant advancements in recent years and appears to be the most promising technology due to its highest degree of freedom to treat the uneven heating problem. This paper can serve as an essential reference contributing to the development of liquid-cooling heat sinks for efficient thermal management of electronics.

Multi-objective inverse design of finned heat sink system with physics-informed neural networks

This study proposes a new inverse design method that utilizes a physics-informed neural network (PINN) to parameterize the geometric and operating inputs, enabling the identification of optimal heat sink designs by starting with the desired objectives and working backward. A specialized hybrid PINN is designed to accurately approximate the governing equations of the conjugate heat transfer processes. On this basis, a surrogate model derived from the hybrid PINN is constructed and integrated with multi-objective optimization and decision-making algorithms. The results of an example finned heat sink system are presented, showcasing the accelerated search for Pareto-optimal designs. The proposed method nearly halved the search time to approximately 113.9 h in comparison with the traditional methods. Moreover, three representative scenarios—high-performance design, equilibrium design, and low-cost design —were compared to visualize the real-time changes in the multiphysics field, facilitating improved physical inspection and understanding of the optimal designs.

Analysis of optimized combined microchannel and heat pipes for electronics cooling

In this work, innovative heat sink designs consisting of Microchannel Heat Sinks (MCHS) and Flat Plate Micro Heat Pipes (FPM-HP) are investigated to improve thermal management in electronic components. The three-dimensional finite volume method is used to analyze the fluid flow and heat transfer in the heat sinks. The validity of the numerical models is confirmed by comparison with pertinent experimental data. The thermal performances of the new heat sink designs are compared to that of double-layer microchannel heat sinks with parallel flow (DLPF MCHS) and counter flow (DLCF MCHS) configurations, as two of the more efficient heat sink designs in the industry. The investigated configuration of Silicon-Water Counter Dual MCHS with rectangular cross-section improves the temperature uniformity by 43–50 % and 26–31 % compared to DLPF and DLCF MCHSs, respectively, and the triangular cross-section configuration improves it by 38–47 % and 21–26 %, respectively. The thermal resistance of heat sinks is reduced by 10–15 % compared to DLPF MCHS and by 2–8 % compared to DLCF MCHS. Additionally, innovative hybrid heat sink designs combined with MCHS and FPM-HP are proposed to optimize hotspot management in electronics cooling applications that involve local high heat generation. The hybrid DLPF MCHS & FPM-HP reduces the maximum temperature and surface temperature gradient of the heat sink by 13–23 % and 20–49 %, while these are reduced by 16–40 % and 27–64 % for the hybrid DLCF MCHS & FPM-HP compared with the corresponding copper base (no heat pipe) designs. The hybrid Counter Dual Rectangular MCHS & FPM-HP reduces the maximum temperature and surface temperature gradient of the heat sink by 15–24 % and 29–65 % compared with the DLCF MCHS with copper base (no heat pipe) design, while these are reduced by 10–26 % and 24–63 % for the Counter Dual Triangular MCHS, respectively.

Review of the Fin Optimization in the Heat Sink Design

Review of the Fin Optimization in the Heat Sink Design

Jet Impingement Cooling of a Microchannel Heat Sink with Microgroove

The present study works on opportunities in improving the design of micro-channel heatsink (MCHS). The present study focuses on investigating numerically the effects of adding grooves at the MCHS which subject to jet impingement cooling. Commercial software ANSYS Fluent is used and realizable k-epsilon model is adopted to conduct a parametric study on the width and depth of rectangular longitudinal grooves at a constant heat flux of 250 W/cm2 applied at the base of MCHS. Two type of channel designs with grooves i.e. center-groove and side-groove were created and investigated numerically. Results show that addition of grooves generally give improvements in cooling performance and reducing the pressure drop. Some designs of side-grooved channels and center-grooved channels improve the temperature uniformity. The size of the groove affects the flow within the grooves and therefore affect the cooling performance.

Effects of shark bionic V-groove structures and nanofluids on thermal management of electronic components

The miniaturization of electronic components makes it difficult for the traditional radiator working medium and radiator structure to meet the requirements. The combination of nanofluids and bionic micro-surfaces is beneficial to solve the heat dissipation problem of electronic components. Based on the bionics, a CPU enhanced heat dissipation system was designed and built based on the V-shaped groove of shark scales and Fe3O4-H2O nanofluids with high heat transfer coefficient. The effects of V-groove angle, height and nanofluids concentration on the comprehensive evaluation index of the radiator were studied. The groove angle S= 1 mm (54°) and height H= 2 mm have the best heat transfer characteristics and comprehensive evaluation index, which can reduce the surface temperature by 2.16 °C and 3.71 °C at most, and increase the heat transfer efficiency by 17.58% and 28.96%. There is a critical concentration (0.3%) that makes the system cooling effect best. The results of the study have a certain reference value for the structural design of heat sink

Gaussian process optimization of phase change material heat sink design

Thermal management strategies based on phase change materials (PCMs) offer promising alternatives to conventional approaches, owing to their ability to absorb transient heat flows by melting. However, the design of PCM heat sinks is challenging due to the nonlinear interactions between heat flow and phase change during melting and solidification. This paper presents the design optimization of PCM heat sinks using a Gaussian Process (GP) method. We show that the GP method offers a significant decrease in computational intensity compared to conventional approaches used for optimization. We apply our method to optimize the design of a PCM-integrated heat sink for a gallium nitride (GaN) device that operates under a pulse train heat profile. Field’s metal-infused copper foam is used as the PCM. We used a reduced order model (ROM) for the PCM-integrated device, which is validated through experimental measurements and finite element simulations. We coupled the ROM with the GP optimizer to determine PCM heat sink design parameters, including geometric dimensions and the composition of the composite PCM, which minimizes both the GaN maximum junction temperature and junction temperature swing. We tested the GP optimizer under various conditions, encompassing GaN device power levels ranging from 1 to 4 W, pulse widths spanning 1 to 10 s, and duty cycles ranging from 10 to 90%. The GP optimizer produced nearly identical results to particle swarm optimization, with a mean absolute error <0.2 °C for optimal thermal performance and a reduction in computational time of 39×. Overall, our design method offers a computationally efficient approach to optimizing PCM-integrated heat sinks for the transient thermal management of electronic devices.

Thermal-hydraulic characterization of manifold microchannel heat sink with diverging channels and uniform heating

This study presents the design and experimentation of a manifold microchannel heat sink with diverging channels, employing ammonia as the working fluid to evaluate its thermal–hydraulic performance under uniform heating conditions. The impact of heat flux, inlet subcooling, saturation temperature, and outlet thermodynamic quality were investigated. Under single-phase conditions, the heat sink exhibited low sensitivity to variations in heat flux with constant thermal resistance and pressure drop. However, with the onset of boiling, the heat transfer capability and pressure drop rapidly increased. A lower inlet subcooling boosted boiling inside the heat sink, leading to decreased thermal resistance and increased pressure drop. Under near-saturated inlet conditions, a higher saturation temperature enhanced heat transfer owing to smaller bubble nucleation and detachment size. The outlet thermodynamic quality for engineering applications should be moderately low because it provides a balance between high heat transfer capability and low pressure drop. Moreover, the results demonstrated excellent thermal–hydraulic performance, with a heat flux of up to 636.9 W/cm2 efficiently dissipated under uniform heating conditions while maintaining the heating surface temperature and pressure drop below 79.3 °C and 150.3 kPa, respectively.

Design and performance analysis of hot side heat sink of thermoelectric cooler device based on simulation and experiment

AbstractAs for improving the heat diversion capacity of the hot side heat sink of the thermoelectric cooler (TEC), thereby improving the operational performance of the TEC, this study designed a type of double‐embedded flat heat pipe (EFHP) finned heat sink and compared with a standard aluminum (Al) heat sink. In experimental studies, TEC under two heat sinks were placed under different operating currents for heat transfer analysis and performance comparison. The experimental results demonstrated that the EFHP heat sink had better heat diversion ability, effectively improving the operational performance of TEC. When the TEC was input with a current of 6A, the thermal resistance of the double EFHP finned heat sink decreased by 19% compared to the Al heat sink; cooling capacity and coefficient of performance increased by 8.3% and 9.46%, respectively. Further, TEC's cold and hot surface temperatures decreased by 10.83% and 10.2%, respectively, and the heat uniformity of the heat sink improved. In addition, the CFD software Icepak was used to analyze the effects of double flat heat pipe spacing and length on the heat sink and TEC and the performance of two heat sinks and TEC under different heat dissipation conditions and obtained good agreement. This study can provide further guidance and assistance in designing the TEC cooling system.

Three-dimensional topology optimization of natural convection using double multiple-relaxation-time lattice Boltzmann method

A topology optimization method based on the double multiple-relaxation-time (MRT) lattice Boltzmann method and level-set method is developed for 3D natural convection heat transfer with the adjoint double MRT model rigorously derived. The double MRT model with better numerical stability enables the optimization at higher Grashof number (Gr) and larger thermal conductivity ratio. Besides, the model is well-suited for large-scale 3D optimization problems since the ideal linear scaling can be nearly achieved for the whole optimization solution. The forward and optimization models are validated individually by typical problems with relative errors as 2 % and 5 % respectively. Physically reasonable heat sink designs in the shape of “thermal tree” or “thermal flower” are obtained, which can outperform the convectional pin fin and rectangular straight fin with at least 17.8 % lower temperature with Gr ranging from 5.9 × 103 to 1.6 × 106, mainly owing to better organization of fluid flow. Parametric studies find that increasing Gr or decreasing the thermal conductivity ratio results in more contracted heat sinks, while decreasing the penalty factor or increasing the spatial resolution leads to smoother design surface. Anisotropic regularization provides more flexibility in shape control, and adding more solid will enrich the structural details.

Three-dimensional numerical investigation of flow and heat transfer performances of novel straight microchannel heat sinks

Four-type novel single crystal diamond (SCD) straight microchannel heat sinks with different shapes (symmetrically inclined, turned symmetrically inclined, V-shaped, and X-shaped) are designed and investigated by the three-dimensional computational fluid dynamics method. These four-type microchannel heat sinks are evaluated in terms of fluid flow and heat transfer capabilities compared to the conventional rectangular straight microchannel (RSMC) heat sink. Our research indicates that the newly designed novel SCD microchannel heat sinks can enhance the heat dissipation effect in comparison to the conventional RSMC heat sink, thereby substantiating its potential for enhancing thermal management in electronic devices. Each V-shaped and X-shaped straight microchannel heat sink has a higher heat transfer capacity than the RSMC heat sink. Among the heat sinks involved in this work, the V-shaped SCD heat sink has the best surface temperature uniformity. The symmetrically inclined heat sink shows the lowest pumping power, with 14.1 % lower than that of the RSMC heat sink. The X-shaped SCD heat sink exhibits a significantly lower thermal resistance, with an 8.5 % reduction compared to the RSMC heat sink. Additionally, it demonstrates a substantially higher Nusselt number, with a 27.6 % increase relative to the RSMC heat sink. The X-shaped SCD heat sink has the highest heat transfer coefficient of up to 1.08 × 105 W/(m2·K), which is 20.4 % higher than that of RSMC heat sink. Owing to the highest performance evaluation criterion of 1.22, the X-shaped straight microchannel heat sink is the most optimal of the designed heat sinks.

Thermal enhancement of heat sinks with bio-inspired textured surfaces

The current requirements of the electronics industry for heat sink design are to increase heat dissipation and to reduce the occupied space and weight. Research to improve the thermal efficiency and reduce the size of heat sinks has mainly been conducted by modifying their geometry to increase the heat transfer area. In the field of tribology research, one way to modify a surface is to apply texture, which involves reducing the contact area but increasing the external area, which in turn could improve the performance of heat dissipation devices. In this paper, bio-textured surfaces are fabricated on straight fin heat sinks and numerically evaluated by thermal finite element analysis. The simulation results are validated by experimental measurements on a single-fin heat sink. The potential of surface texturing in heat sinks is demonstrated here through a numerical parametric analysis of a full-scale heat sink. The results show a reduction in operating temperatures of more than 26 %, reduction in thermal resistance around 34 % and increase between 21 % and 40 % of heat sink effectiveness for textured surface heat sinks compared to smooth fin heat sinks, depending on the convection coefficient. These results suggest that the design methodology proposed here is more relevant for heat sinks used in high power dissipation applications such as computer CPUs and GPUs.