Comparative analysis of heat sink pressure drop using different methodologies

Pressure drop across heat sink is one of the key variables that govern the thermal performance of the heat sink in forced convection environment. There are several analytical methods to estimate the heat sink pressure drop, however correctly selecting one that can represent the reality over a range of airflow found in typical electronics cooling application is difficult. In this paper, we propose a modified analytical method to estimate the channel velocity and used it to calculate the total heat sink pressure drop through different theoretical pressure drop equations. The theoretical results produced from the theoretical equations were compared against results gathered from experimental study and numerical method.