ENHANCED ELECTRONIC COOLING USING FIN HEATSINK: A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS

Electronic devices consistently produce undesired thermal energy. The growing demand for these devices in various applications necessitates innovative cooling solutions to mitigate thermal losses. The main challenge in electronic cooling is the full development of the thermal boundary layer. This study aims to optimize the conventional rectangular plate-fin heatsink by redeveloping a new thermal boundary, which involves morphing the fin configuration and distribution while maintaining a constant fin volume. We used numerical simulation in COMSOL Multiphysics to analyze and compare conventional rectangular plate-fin heatsink performance with two optimized configurations: the bifurcated longitudinal split fin and hybrid plate-pin fin heatsinks. The methodology involves assessing the thermal and flow performance in the form of the average heatsink baseplate temperature and the average pressure drop across the heatsink. We investigated these under a constant heat flux of 5903 W/m2 and varying air velocities between 4 and 12 m/s. The results showed that using five bifurcated plate fins and hybrid plate-pin fins lowers the temperature of the heatsink base plate by 25% and 47%, respectively, compared to conventional rectangular plate fins when the air velocity is 8 m/s. However, these optimized configurations increased the pressure drop across the heat sink.