Selection and optimization of pin cross-sections for electronics cooling

Pin fins are widely used as elements that provide increased cooling for electronic devices. Increasing demands regarding the performance of such devices can be observed due to the increasing heat production density of electronic components. For this reason, extensive work is being carried out to select and optimize pin fin elements for increased heat transfer. In the present paper, a procedure is described to select heat exchanger surfaces with pin fins in accordance with their location in a performance diagram. Such a diagram provides performance comparisons of pin fins with respect to two operating parameters: the heat transfer rate per unit base surface area and the power input for the same area. It is shown that elliptical cross-sections offer the best performance compared with all other investigated cross-sections for pin fins. The present work demonstrates that the heat exchanger performance plot allows also the selection of the best elliptical cross-section design within the initial design set (design set obtained numerically) in analogy with the Pareto-optimality approach. However, the real optimal geometry of the elliptical cross-section is deduced from commercial optimization software, modeFRONTIER. It is shown that by subsequent use of the virtual solutions from the response surface modelling (RSM) of that software and their validation with Star-CD, a complete “Pareto-frontier solution” can be obtained.