Analytical thermal and cost optimization of micro-structured plate-fin heat sink

Abstract

Paper presented to the 10th International Conference on Heat Transfer, Fluid Mechanics and Thermodynamics, Florida, 14-16 July 2014.

Microchannel heat sinks have been widely used in the field of thermo-fluids due to the rapid growth in technological applications which require high rates of heat transfer in relatively small spaces and volumes. In this work, a micro plate-fin heat sink is optimized parametrically, to minimize the thermal resistance and to maximize the cost performance of the heat sink. The width and the height of the microchannels, and the fin thickness are analytically optimized at a wide range of pumping power. Using an effective numeric test, the generated equations also discuss the optimum parameters at three sizes of the substrate plat of the heat sink. Results show that, at any pumping power there are specific values of the channel width and fin thickness which produce minimum thermal resistance in the heat sink. The results also illustrate that, a larger channel width and a smaller fin thickness lead to a better cost performance, and the optimum channel height decreases when the pumping power increases.