Partially heated heat sinks in a zero-bypass

The need to improve the thermal performance of heat sinks remains a design priority for thermal engineers. Most of the considerations so far have involved various shapes and sizes of the fin designs. This numerical study evaluates the influence of the heating position on the thermal performance of a plate-fin heat sink in a zero-bypass characterized by the thermal resistance data obtained from experiments. For the heating positions evaluated, the central heating position offers the least thermal resistance. In practice, many cooling systems, like in electronic components, involve heat sinks with partially heated sections; therefore, evaluating the best position to place the heat sinks could be a fairly cheap way of enhancing the thermal performance.