Heat Sink Design Optimization Using the Thermal ShortCut concept

Calculation and display of a ther mal `ShortCut´ scalar field as an integrated part of a CFD simulation enables a practitioner to visualize and understand the physical mechanisms by which heat is removed from an electronics system and where opportunities exists to introduce new heat transfer paths. By applying the characteristics of this thermal ShortCut scalar to heat sink design aspects, one can idetify near optimal solutions with a minimal number of simulations. This work will demonstrate a correlation between the ShortCut scalar and the local Nusselt number, and use this correlation to determine the optimal areas where fin material can be removed with minimal impact on the thermal performance of the heat sink. The results will be compared to that obtained by more traditional Design of Experiments techniques.