Vembuli, Vijayaraghavan. Experimental investigation of minichannel heat sinks for electronic cooling applications. Retrieved from https://doi.org/doi:10.7282/T3GX4DF2
DescriptionSeveral novel methods of fabricating heat sinks have been developed in recent years, with complicated profiles. However, in this study, we focus on the conventional machining technique to fabricate simple, geometrically enhanced heat sink with readily available, less expensive, liquid such as distilled water, which still have potential to be explored further. There has been a lot of work done with heat sinks on the mini scale (diameter often to the order of 1 mm). So it was decided to explore some simple geometries of heat sinks with available tools for machining. The heat sink material was chosen as brass. Three different straight channel heat sinks were fabricated, using conventional milling process, of width 2 mm, 3 mm and 4 mm, respectively. The height of the channel is kept constant at 4mm. The heat generated by an electronic component was simulated by an Omega Kapton flexible heater. At a heat power of 12 W, the lowest heat sink base temperature was achieved using the 2mm heat sink. Also, the pressure drop across the heat sink has been reported. The temperature drop across the heat sink has been reported and it has been found to be maximum for a heat sink with 2 mm fin spacing. Base temperature of the heat sink was found to decrease by reducing the width of the channels and by increasing the flow rate of distilled water over a period of time. It can be concluded from the experimental investigation that the geometrically enhanced heat sinks manufactured using conventional methods is comparatively less expensive.