Parallel Plate Fin Heat Sink Research Articles

NUMERICAL INVESTIGATIONS OF THERMO-FLUIDIC CHARACTERISTICS IN INNOVATIVE PARALLEL PLATE-FIN HEAT SINK DESIGN SUBJECTED TO PARALLEL FLOW: EXPLORING THE STAGGERING EFFECT

NUMERICAL INVESTIGATIONS OF THERMO-FLUIDIC CHARACTERISTICS IN INNOVATIVE PARALLEL PLATE-FIN HEAT SINK DESIGN SUBJECTED TO PARALLEL FLOW: EXPLORING THE STAGGERING EFFECT

3D topology optimization of heat sinks for liquid cooling

This paper conducts topology optimization of three dimensional heat sinks for liquid cooling. The forced cooling system is modeled with weakly coupled steady-state incompressible Navier-Stokes equation and the energy equation. We study the distribution of the conductive solid components in order to minimize the average temperature on the heat source surface. A set of consistent adjoint equations are derived from the weak forms of the state equations in order to obtain the sensitivity. We discretize the simulation domain with six million tetrahedral elements. Iterative solvers with preconditioners are used to solve the partial differential equations. We present three examples with different geometries and boundary conditions as benchmarks for topology optimization of forced cooling problems. Detailed numerical validations on one design from topology optimization show that the optimized parallel plate fin heat sink could consume up to 450% more pumping power than the topology optimization design while achieving the same thermal performance, or the temperature of the optimized parallel plate fin heat sink is 10–40% higher than the design from topology optimization when the pumping power is same. The superior performance of the design from topology optimization is achieved with a flow split effect due to the heat sink geometry. This geometry sends the hot flow to the top layer and the cold flow to the bottom layer further in the downstream region in an aerodynamically efficient manner.

Performance of a guided plate heat sink at high altitude

In the present study, the thermal performance of an enhanced air-cooled heat sink system, comprising of a parallel plate-fin heat sink (PPFHS) with a guide plate installed to alter the bypass flow, was analyzed for fan-driven convection conditions at various altitudes from sea level to 12,000 m. Numerical simulations were carried out using ANSYS Fluent 16.0 with the κ-ω SST turbulence model to analyze the airflow and assess the thermal performance. After validation by experimental data in the literature, numerical results of the flow and temperature fields were obtained for different environmental pressures, several fan speeds and PPFHS design parameters. The measured characteristic fan curves at different altitudes show that the fan delivers approximately the same volume flow rate at different altitudes. For high-altitude operation, using the PPFHS only configuration could lead to electronic failure due to the larger temperature increase compared to using the PPFHS/guide plate configuration. For both configurations, the optimum fin number ranges between 20 and 32, which depends on the environmental pressure and fan speed. Improper use of highly dense PPFHS may lead to inadequate electronic cooling and will add extra weight for high-altitude operation. The optimal fin thickness depends on the fan speed, and the minimum thermal resistance occurs with low fin thickness at the lower fan speeds. Weight optimization procedures were conducted to obtain a considerable decrease in the PPFHS/guide plate weight and to achieve optimal thermal resistance at lower fan speeds.

Analysis and Modeling of Thermal Effect and Optical Characteristic of LED Systems With Parallel Plate-Fin Heatsink

Based on the photoelectrothermal (PET) theory, prediction methods for the thermal effect and optical properties of the light-emitting diode (LED) systems mounted on a given parallel plate-fin heatsink are proposed in this paper. With the PET theory and the heatsink characteristics (heat transfer coefficient, equivalent radius for heat source, fins efficiency), it is possible to accurately quantify junction temperature, heat dissipation coefficient, optical power, and luminous flux of the LED systems. The prediction model consists of a series of optical and thermal evaluation, with which it is simple for LED system designers to comply. The proposed model has been validated using LED sources, which shows good agreement between the calculated and experimental results.

Experimental Study of Air-Cooled Parallel Plate Fin Heat Sinks with and without Circular Pin Fins between the Plate Fins

Experiments were conducted to investigate forced convective cooling performance of an air cooled parallel plate fin heat sink with and without circular pin fins between the plate fins. The original parallel plate heat sink was fabricated consist of 9 parallel plates of length 53 mm with cross-sectional area of 1.4 mm in width by 20 mm height for each plate. The second heat sink has the same geometry of original one but with some circular pins between the plate fins. Thermal and hydrodynamics performances of the heat sinks have been assessed from the results obtained for the pressure drop, thermal resistance and overall performance with the free stream air velocity ranging from 4.7 to 12.5 m/s. Results show that the free stream air velocity has a significant effect on the thermal and hydrodynamics performance of the system. With increasing free stream velocity, the heat transfer coefficient increases and consequently the thermal resistance decreases while pressure drop increases due to higher inertial of fluid at higher velocities. Furthermore, at the same free stream air velocity the thermal resistance for the heat sink with circular pin is about 37.7% lower than that of the original heat sink.

Thermal analysis of CPU with CCC and copper base plate heat sinks using CFD

AbstractThis paper describes experimental and theoretical investigations of heat sinks with different base plate material mounted on CPUs. The thermal model of the computer system with heat sinks which is created using Gambit (for preprocessing) and the simulation is carried out using Fluent (for solver execution and post processing). The following parameters are considered: fin thickness, fin height, and number of fins. Primarily in this paper different base plate thickness and base plate materials are optimized for maintaining the cost and thermal performance of a heat sink. In this research work, the thermal model of the computer system with a slot parallel plate fin heat sink design has been selected, and the fluid flow and thermal flow characteristics of heat sinks are studied. The slot parallel plate fin heat sinks have been used with copper base plates and carbon carbon composite (CCC) base plates to enhance the heat dissipation. The results and conclusion obtained in this present work are found to be in good agreement with numerical results. A complete computer chassis with slot parallel plate heat sinks is investigated varying the thickness of base plate, and the performances of the heat sinks are compared. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Heat Trans Asian Res; Published online in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/htj). DOI 10.1002/htj.20342

2-Dimensional CFD simulation and correlation development for optimization of fin heatsinks in electronic cooling

CFD has penetrated into the field of electronic cooling for some time. Both parallel and staggered plate fin heatsinks are widely used in modern computers. This paper presents the ways to make most use of CFD in optimization design of those heatsinks: the flow and heat transfer of staggered and parallel plate fin heatsinks of various geometry were simulated by using Fluent 5.0 commercial CFD code. Based on 60 different simulation solutions, two correlations, concerning Nusselt number and friction factor as the functions of geometrical and operational parameters of the heatsinks were developed. The presentation parameter examination was also performed by comparing the numerical solutions with the analytical solutions of parallel plate arrays, showing that the correct parameters are used in the correlations.