Numerical Study of Performance of Porous Fin Heat Sink of Functionally Graded Material for Improved Thermal Management of Consumer Electronics

The ever-increasing demand for high-performance electronic and computer systems has unequivocally called for increased microprocessor performance. However, increasing microprocessor performance requires increasing the power and on-chip power density of the microprocessor, both of which are associated with increased heat dissipation. In recent times, thermal management of electronic systems has gained intense research attention due to increased miniaturization trend in the electronics industry. In this paper, we present a numerical study on the performance of a convective-radiative porous heat sink with functionally graded material (FGM) for improved cooling of various consumer electronics. For the theoretical investigation, the thermal property of the FGM is assumed as a linear and power-law function. We solved the developed thermal models using the Chebyshev spectral collocation method (CSCM). The effects of inhomogeneity index of FGM and convective and radiative parameters on the thermal behavior of the porous heat sink are investigated. This paper shows that increase in the inhomogeneity index of FGM and convective and radiative parameters improves the thermal efficiency of the porous fin heat sink. Moreover, for all values of Nc and Rd, the temperature gradient along the fin of FGM is negligible compared to HM fin in both linear and power-law functions. For comparison, the thermal predictions made in this paper using CSCM agree excellently with the established results of Runge-Kutta with shooting and homotopy analytical method.