Experimental study on the thermal performance of straight and oblique finned, polymer heat sinks

Heat sink can effectively dissipate heat in a range of thermal applications for improved performance and reliability. Thermally conductive polymer composites show great promise in solving the overheating issue in electronic devices. This experimental study investigates the thermal performance and the flow characteristics of straight and oblique finned heat sinks made of thermally conductive polymer composites under forced convection conditions over 7 . 45 × 10 4 ≤ Re ≤ 3 . 60 × 10 5 , where Re is the Reynolds number. The heat sinks used were 3D printed using Ice9 Flex (carbon filled polymer, from TCPoly), copper filled filament (polylactic acid with 80% copper particles) and bronze filled filament (polylactic acid with 80% bronze parti-cles), respectively. Oblique fins were found to effectively reduce the thermal resistance of heat sinks, increase the convec-tive heat transfer and the inner-fin velocity which results in lower pressure drop, in comparison to straight finned heat sinks. The carbon-filled polymer (Ice9 Flex) was shown to have much superior thermal dissipation characteristics compared to metal filled filaments.