Investigação experimental e análise numérica da transferência de calor em um dissipador de calor aletado

Abstract

Electronic equipment must dissipate heat during its operation so that the temperatures reached are kept within the operation limits. High operating temperatures can damage the equipment through diffusion in materials, part take-off or thermal stress. To avoid these damages, heat sinks should be used, to keep temperatures at safe and acceptable levels. The most commonly used are finned heat sinks. These extended surfaces can be used both in natural convection as well as in forced convection, which promotes the removal of higher rates of heat. In this context, in order to analyze the heat transfer in peripheral components of computer such as motherboards and video cards, this work performs numerical simulations and experimental tests of heat transfer in an approximate model of these components, through the use of finned heat sinks in forced convection, promoted by the use of a commercial fan that is also in the IcepakTM library. This provides a very realistic simulation condition, providing reliable data for comparisons between the numerical simulation and the experimental bench test. The results obtained from the experimental analysis were compared with the results of the numerical simulations and showed a satisfactory agreement. The numerical method was used for geometric optimization studies of the heatsink, which presented the best configuration of the set of fins for each flow range.