Designing optimum heat sinks

Increases in heat and heat concentration from microelectronics devices, combined with the reduction in overall form factors, make it essential to optimize heat sink designs with the least possible trade-offs in materials and manufacturing costs. In predicting the thermal performance of a heat sink, one of the unknown, hard-to-estimate parameters is the impact of actual conditions upon its theoretical performance. Of special interest is recognition of how the approach velocity of the incoming air, and the manner in which it presented, impacts the performance of the heat sink. This paper presents a orderly overview of the process for optimizing heat sinks including a discussion on the analytical simulation tools/techniques for predicting and optimizing the thermal performance of heat sinks