Cooling a Heat Sink with Convective Heat Transfer - Simulation Example
Overview
Thermal management of electronics is an important application in nearly all electronics today — from laptops and desktops to smartphones. In laptops and desktops, a fan is used to blow cold air over these electronics to remove heat via forced convection. In these applications, a heat sink is integrated with the electronics package to enhance heat transfer. The cold air flowing over the heat sink removes the thermal energy from the electronics package, which in turn leads to an overall increase in the air temperature. In this simulation example, we will focus on the convective heat transfer from one such heat sink.
Objectives
In this simulation example, you will learn how to set up a problem in Ansys Fluent to calculate the heat transfer rate dissipated by a heat sink due to conductive and convective heat transfer modes. You will simulate the flow of cold air over the heat sink heated from its base and learn to estimate the heat loss from the sink.
Setup
Download the Mesh file required for setting up the simulation and associated Case & Data files here. Follow the instructions below to set up this simulation in Ansys Fluent. In case you face any issues setting up or running the simulation, refer to the corresponding initial and final Case and Data files.
Results
Let us now look at the simulation results and analyze them.