Finned Metal Foam Heat Sinks for Electronics Cooling in Forced Convection

Abstract

In this paper, we present recent experimental results on forced convective heat transfer in novel finned metal foam heat sinks. Experiments were conducted on aluminum foams of 90 percent porosity and pore size corresponding to 5 PPI (200 PPM) and 20 PPI (800 PPM) with one, two, four and six fins, where PPI (PPM) stands for pores per inch (pores per meter) and is a measure of the pore density of the porous medium. All of these heat sinks were fabricated in-house. The forced convection results show that heat transfer is significantly enhanced when fins are incorporated in metal foam. The heat transfer coefficient increases with increase in the number of fins until adding more fins retards heat transfer due to interference of thermal boundary layers. For the 20 PPI samples, this maximum was reached for four fins. For the 5 PPI heat sinks, the trends were found to be similar to those for the 20 PPI heat sinks. However, due to larger pore sizes, the pressure drop encountered is much lower at a particular air velocity. As a result, for a given pressure drop, the heat transfer coefficient is higher compared to the 20 PPI heat sink. For example, at a Δp of 105 Pa, the heat transfer coefficients were found to be 1169 W/m2-K and 995 W/m2-K for the 5 PPI and 20 PPI 4-finned heat sinks, respectively. The finned metal foam heat sinks outperform the longitudinal finned and normal metal foam heat sinks by a factor between 1.5 and 2, respectively. Finally, an analytical expression is formulated based on flow through an open channel and incorporating the effects of thermal dispersion and interfacial heat transfer between the solid and fluid phases of the porous medium. The agreement of the proposed relation with the experimental results is promising.