Fan swirl effects on cooling heat sinks and electronic packages

Author

Thurlow, Ernest ; Rather, Eric ; Mansingh, Vivek

Author_Institution

Appl. Thermal Technol. Inc., Santa Clara, CA, USA

fYear

2000

fDate

2000

Firstpage

91

Lastpage

98

Abstract

This paper presents fan swirl effects on cooling heat sinks and electronic packages. The case-to-air thermal resistance, θca, of a power-dissipating device in a duct was compared with and without swirled airflow, for a variety of heat sink configurations. For a given volumetric airflow rate through the duct, power dissipation, and heat sink geometry, the presence of swirl always reduced θca. Enhanced cooling due to swirl was most evident at low airflow rates and with crosscut heat sink geometries. Swirl effects were observed as far as 15 diameters downstream of the fan. Based on these results, to improve the accuracy of CFD models, the effects of swirl should be taken into account in analysis of heat sinks and packages downstream of fans

Keywords

cooling; heat sinks; swirling flow; thermal management (packaging); thermal resistance; CFD models; case-to-air thermal resistance; cooling heat sinks; crosscut heat sink; duct; electronic packages; enhanced cooling; fan swirl effects; power-dissipating device; temperature difference; volumetric airflow rate; Computational fluid dynamics; Ducts; Electronic packaging thermal management; Electronics cooling; Electronics packaging; Geometry; Heat sinks; Power dissipation; Resistance heating; Thermal resistance;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Semiconductor Thermal Measurement and Management Symposium, 2000. Sixteenth Annual IEEE

Conference_Location

San Jose, CA

Print_ISBN

0-7803-5916-X

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/STHERM.2000.837067

Filename

837067