Numerical basis and validation of CAD-centric CFD: Honeycomb heatsink study

In a study by Ma et al. [1] in 2010, an innovative honeycomb heatsink design for an LED lighting system was analysed using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and experimentation. When we looked critically at the images of the experiment in Ma's paper, we noted some discrepancies between the simulation model and the experimental setup. Although the experimental setup was not fully described, we were able to identify a number of issues and make near-exact estimates of the dimensions and other values needed to include their effects in the simulation. The resulting simulation matched the test data very well. In this paper, we present the rationale for applying a different approach to electronics thermal design. We also describe how alternative CFD technologies can handle fluid flow and heat transfer within complex geometries without simplification. This novel approach to electronics thermal design is illustrated using the honeycomb heatsink example.