Numerical Optimization of PCM-Based Heat Sink for Thermal Management of High-power-density Electronics

The removal of high heat fluxes is an important problem for electronics in applications including high frequency amplifier, electric vehicles, and high-performance computing. This research aims to optimize the geometric parameters of the metal fins embedded with PCM for the transient heat dissipation requirements of high power density electronics. A comparison was carried out between heat sink with and without phase change material (PCM). The effects of various parameters such as number of fins, fin thickness, fin heigh, fin length and power levels were studied. Simulations show that increasing the number of fins can significantly improve the cooling performance. However, when the number of fins reaches a critical value, the heat dissipation performance does not improve more. Furthermore, different numbers of fins have their respective optimal fin thicknesses. Through finite element simulation analysis, the optimized fin embedded with PCM heat sink reduces the maximum temperature of the heat source to 159°C. This signifies a 64% decrease compared to a pure PCM heat sink, and a 47% decrease compared to a pure metal heat sink. Additionally, the study found that increasing the fin length and height effectively reduces the heat source temperature. The optimal fin thickness increases to accommodate the higher heat flux encountered during transient heat transfer processes.