Experimental and theoretical investigations of the thermal performance of a variety of heat sinks have been made. The heat sinks investigated were: straight finned, elliptical finned, small pin finned, circular disc finned, elliptical disc finned, frustum finned and double base straight finned. Realistic, manufacturable geometries are considered for minimizing thermal resistance at low velocity. The experimental results of several of the simple geometry heat sinks have been compared to those predicted by a commercially available computational fluid dynamics code fluent. The parameters such as fin geometry, fin pitch and fin height are optimized primarily in this paper and a second task is carried out to optimize base plate thicknesses, base plate materials and modify design of heat sink for improving the thermal performance in the next generation. Although the performance of heat sink is good, the temperature of heat sink at center is high. In this research work, the best heat sink geometry is selected and modified in order to reduce maximum temperature distribution and hot spots of heat sink at center by changing the geometry design and adding one more base. It is observed that flow obstructions in the chassis and the resulting air recirculation affect the heat sink temperature distribution.

This paper describes experimental and theoretical investigations of heat sinks with different base plate material mounted on CPUs. The thermal model of the computer system with heat sinks which is created using Gambit (for preprocessing) and the simulation is carried out using Fluent (for solver execution and post processing). The following parameters are considered: fin thickness, fin height, and number of fins. Primarily in this paper different base plate thickness and base plate materials are optimized for maintaining the cost and thermal performance of a heat sink. In this research work, the thermal model of the computer system with a slot parallel plate fin heat sink design has been selected, and the fluid flow and thermal flow characteristics of heat sinks are studied. The slot parallel plate fin heat sinks have been used with copper base plates and carbon carbon composite (CCC) base plates to enhance the heat dissipation. The results and conclusion obtained in this present work are found to be in good agreement with numerical results. A complete computer chassis with slot parallel plate heat sinks is investigated varying the thickness of base plate, and the performances of the heat sinks are compared.

Cooling is indispensable for maintaining the desired performance and reliability over a very huge variety of products like electronic devices, computer, automobiles, high power laser system etc. Apart from the heat load amplification and heat fluxes caused by many industrial products, cooling is one of the major technical challenges encountered by the industries like manufacturing sectors, transportation, microelectronics, etc. Normally water, ethylene glycol and oil are being used as the fluid to carry away the heat in these devices. The development of nanofluid generally shows a better heat transfer characteristics than the water. This research work summarizes the experimental study of the forced convective heat transfer and flow characteristics of a nanofluid consisting of water and 1% Al2O3 (volume concentration) nanoparticle flowing in a parallel flow, counter flow and shell and tube heat exchanger under laminar flow conditions. The Al2O3 nanoparticles of about 50 nm diameter are used in this work. Three different mass flow rates have been selected and the experiments have been conducted and their results are reported. This result portrays that the overall heat transfer coefficient and dimensionless Nusselt number of nanofluid is slightly higher than that of the base liquid at same mass flow rate at same inlet temperature. From the experimental result it is clear that the overall heat transfer coefficient of the nanofluid increases with an increase in the mass flow rate. It shows that whenever mass flow rate increases, the overall heat transfer coefficient along with Nusselt number eventually increases irrespective of flow direction. It was also found that during the increase in mass flow rate LMTD value ultimately decreases irrespective of flow direction. However, shell and tube heat exchanger provides better heat transfer characteristics than parallel and counter flow heat exchanger due to multi pass flow of nanofluid. The overall heat transfer coefficient, Nusselt number and logarithmic mean temperature difference of the water and Al2O3 /water nanofluid are also studied and the results are plotted graphically.

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