Thermal Performance of Metal Foam Heat Sink With Pin Fins for Nonuniform Heat Flux Electronics Cooling

In this paper, a concept of metal foam heat sink with pin fins (MFPF heat sink) is proposed to improve the cooling performance of high-powered electronics with nonuniform heat flux. Numerical simulations are carried out to investigate the thermohydraulic performance of MFPF heat sink, and the metal foam (MF) heat sink and traditional pin fin (PF) heat sink are employed for comparison. The capability of MFPF heat sink in handling nonuniform heat flux is examined under different power levels. It indicates that the MFPF heat sink greatly enhances the heat transfer performance, due to the common effects of the improved flow distribution and enhanced overall effective thermal conductivity (ETC). Results also show that the MFPF heat sink promotes the improvement of the bottom wall temperature uniformity. Porosity has more pronounced effects on heat transfer performance of MFPF heat sink than pore density. A nonuniform distribution heat flux (15–80–15 W/cm2) can be successfully dissipated using the proposed MFPF heat sink with the junction temperature below 95 °C at Re of 500.