Study on forced air convection cooling for electronic assemblies

The slotted fin concept was employed to improve the air cooling performance of plate-fin in heat sinks. Numerical simulations of laminar heat transfer and flow pressure drop were conducted for the integral plate fin, discrete plate fin and discrete slotted fin heat sinks. It is found that the performance of the discrete plate fin is better than that of the integral continuum plate fin and the performance of slotted fin is better than that of the discrete plate fin at the same pumping power of the fan. A new type of heat sink characterized by discrete and slotted fin surfaces with thinner fins and smaller spaces between fins is then proposed. Preliminary computation shows that this type of heat sink may be useful for the next generation of higher thermal load CPUs. The limit of cooling capacity for air-cooling techniques was also addressed.