Thermal analysis of proposed heat sink design under natural convection for the thermal management of electronics

Abstract

The rapid development in the field of electronics has led to high power densities and miniaturization of electronic packages. Because of the compact size of electronic devices, the rate of heat dissipation has increased drastically. Due to this reason, the air-cooling system with a conventional heat sink is insufficient to remove large quantity of heat. A novel macro-channel ?L-shaped heat sink? is pro-posed and analyzed to overcome this problem. The thermal resistance and fluid-flow behavior under natural convection, of the novel and conventional air-cooled heat sink designs, are analyzed. Governing equations are discretized and solved across the computational domain of the heat sink, with 3-D conjugate heat transfer model. Numerical results are validated through experimentation. The effect of parameters i.e., fin height, number of fins and heat sink size, on the thermal resistance and fluid-flow are reported. Examination of these parameters provide a better physical understanding from energy conservation and management view point. Substantial increase in the thermal performance is noted for the novel ?L-shaped heat sink? compared to the conventional design.