Thermal Design Optimization for Strip-Fin Heat Sinks with a Ducted Air Flow

An effective method for performing the thermal optimization of strip-fin heat sinks with a ducted air flow under constraints of pressure drop, mass, and space limitations has been successfully developed. The thermal and hydrodynamic models for strip-fin heat sinks have been developed. The design of experiments approach is performed to explore the relationships between design variables and responses with the minimal number of experimental runs. A statistical method for sensitivity analysis of the design factors, including the size of heat sink footprint, conductivity of sink base, thickness of sink base, stream wise and span wise fin pitch, fin thickness, fin length, fin height, and upstream air velocity, is performed to determine the key factors that are critical to the design; and a response surface methodology is then applied to establish regression models for the thermal resistance and pressure drop in terms of the design factors with an central composite design. Diagnostic analysis of the residuals from the regression model may reveal errors that were not in Gaussian distribution, which is one of the most important assumptions of experimental analysis; in the case of this work, a log-transformation is applied to make the response variance closer to the normal distribution. Furthermore, to screen out the insignificant model terms for the better modeling accuracy, the statistical skill, F-test, is applied. By employing the gradient-based numerical optimization technique, a series of constrained optimal designs have been efficiently performed