The Influence of the Thermal Conductivity on the Heat Transfer Performance in a Heat Sink

Abstract

An extensive numerical analysis of the temperature distribution and fluid flow in a heat sink currently being used for cooling desktop computers was conducted, and demonstrated that if the base of a heat sink was fabricated as a heat pipe instead of a solid material, the heat transfer performance could be significantly increased. It was shown that as the heat sink length increases, the effect of the thermal conductivity of the base on the heat transfer performance increases to be a predictable limit. As the thermal conductivity is increased, the heat transfer performance of heat sinks is enhanced, but cannot exceed this limit. When the thermal conductivity increases to 2,370 W/m-K, the heat transfer performance of the heat sinks will be very close to the heat transfer performance obtained assuming a base with infinite thermal conductivity. Further increases in the thermal conductivity would not significantly improve the heat transfer performance of the heat sinks.