GRAPHITE FOAM STRUCTURES AS AN EFFECTIVE MEANS TO COOL HIGH-PERFORMANCE ELECTRONICS

Abstract

Due to their unique heat transfer features, graphite foams are used in the current analysis to form heat sinks effective enough to dissipate extreme heat generated within high-performance electronics. The heat sinks proposed are formed from foamed-baffles arranged either in parallel or perpendicular to the coolant paths through the staggered slots in between to alleviate the penalty of pressure drop while maintaining high heat dissipation capability. Two different sorts of dielectric coolants namely, air and the FC-3283 electronic liquid developed by 3MTM, have been utilized to directly dissipate the heat generated. The feasibility of the currently proposed heat sinks has been examined numerically based on the volume averaging concept of porous media employing the local thermal non-equilibrium model to account for interstitial heat exchange between the foam solid matrix and the fluid particles flowing across. A wide range of design parameters has been tested including the heat sink configuration along with structural characteristics of the graphite foam used. It has been found that foam baffles oriented perpendicular to the path of coolant flow can dissipate heat by about 50% better than those parallel to it, but with higher pressure losses. It has also been found that heat dissipation capability, for a certain orientation of baffles, can be improved by up to 100% when the foam pore size is doubled with outstanding saving in pressure losses by up to 300%. The impact of operating conditions, including the coolant flowrate and the heat flux applied, has also been inspected. The currently proposed heat sinks have been found efficient to meet the thermal demands of high-performance electronics and sweep away the extreme heat generated there with reasonable cost of pressure drop, where the proper selection of design parameters in light of the operating conditions applied can prevent the emergence of hot spots entirely. Extreme operating conditions, i.e. with heat density of up to 10W/cm2 for air-cooled heat sinks and 100W/cm2 for those cooled with FC-3283, can be well managed when a heat sink is configured from baffles that are oriented perpendicularly to the coolant flow path and formed of graphite foam having low porosity (∅=0.8) and larger pore size