Improvement of Forced Convection Cooling Due to the Attachment of Heat Sources to a Conducting Thick Plate

It is proposed that a conductive thick plate is placed between a heat source and a cold flowing fluid to improve the forced convection cooling performance. Detailed numerical work is carried out to determine the optimal thickness of the conductive thick plate which minimizes the peak temperature. It is shown that the thick plate significantly reduces the excess temperature of heat sources, by way of conducting the heat current in an optimal manner. It is shown that the reduction in the excess temperature of heat sources depends upon the Reynolds number of the fluid flow and the material thermal conductivity. Correlations for the optimum plate thickness and reduction in excess temperature of heat sources are presented, which could be useful for the practitioners.