Cooling of high-performance electronic equipment using graphite foam heat sinks

In the present research, highly-conductive graphite foams have been employed to effectively dissipate the heat generated in electronic components. The heat sinks suggested have been configured from staggered foamed-baffles arranged either in parallel or perpendicular to the air paths through the slots in between to reduce the pressure drop resulted while improving the heat dissipation. The performance of the currently proposed heat sinks has been examined numerically based on the volume averaging concept of porous media, with employing the local thermal non-equilibrium model to account for the interstitial heat exchange between the foam solid matrix and the fluid particles flowing across. The Simcenter STAR-CCM+CFD commercial code has been utilised to implement the iterative solution based on the SIMPLE algorithm. A wide range of design parameters have been tested including the heat sink configuration along with geometrical characteristics of the graphite foam used. The impact of operating conditions, including the inlet airflow strength and the heat flux applied, has been inspected as well. The currently proposed heat sinks have been found efficient to meet the extremely thermal demands of high-performance electronic equipment and sweep away the heat generated there with a reasonable cost of pressure drop, where hot spots can be eliminated entirely with proper manipulation of design conditions.

Automated summary

The research employs highly-conductive graphite foams to dissipate heat in electronic components and proposes a novel heat sink configuration using staggered foam baffles to reduce pressure drop and improve heat dissipation. The study shows that the new heat sinks efficiently meet the thermal demands of high-performance electronic equipment, eliminate hot spots, and operate with reasonable pressure drop.