Experimental investigation on self-similar heat sinks for liquid cooled electronics

Abstract

The high heat transfer coefficients in microchannels are attractive for direct cooling of electronic systems requiring high heat-flux removal. In this work we are presenting the results of a study on self-similar heat sinks for liquid cooled electronics, made from copper, designed for industrial application and for large scale production. The internal structures, where the most part of the active cooling takes place, have been designed in order to achieve high heat transfer coefficients. As it is almost impossible to validate the design and describe the flow characteristics inside the device via analytical solutions, a well known numerical code was employed to have an insight of the thermal-fluid distributions. It is clear from the simulation that even if copper is characterized by a high thermal conductivity, most of the heat is removed in the overflow-structure, on the side of the device adjacent to the source of heat. This paper attempts to critically analyse a comprehensive list of data as well as plots in order to illustrate the significant characteristics of this type of device.