CFD Studies of Heat Transfer in Heat Sink

The analysis of heat sink is an important area of heat transfer study for the last decade. A heat sink is a single component or an assembly which is capable of transferring the heat generated within a solid material to a fluid medium, such as air. A heat sink is physically designed to increase the surface area in contact with the cooling fluid surrounding it, such as air, approach air velocity, choice of material, in design and surface treatment are some of design factors which influence the thermal resistance i.e. thermal performance of a heat sink. This thesis describes about plate fin aluminum heat sink which was heated from the bottom side. In this research work, the thermal model of the system with different fin geometry design has been selected and fluid flow; thermal flow characteristics of heat sink have been studied. In this research work, heat sinks are investigated and performances of heat sinks are compared experimentally as well as computationally. An experimental technique was developed for measuring thermal performance of heat sink and overall convective heat transfer coefficient for fin. Experiment was carried out for wide range of parameters for forced convection.