Georgia Institute of Technology College of Sciences

The Glezer lab at Georgia Tech has found that vorticity can improve heat transfer efficiency in electronic hardware. Vortices are able to enhance the forced convection in the boundary layer and fully mix the heated fluid with cooler core flow. Some recent experiments showed the possibility of using a vibrated reed to produce vortices in heat sinks. In this work, we simulate both the fluid and the heat transfer process in a 3-dimensional plate fin heat sink. We propose a simplified model by considering flow and temperature in a 2-D channel, and extend the model to the third dimension using a 1-D heat fin model. We simulate periodically steady-state solutions. We show that the total heat flux transferred from the plate to the fluid can be improved with vortices given the same input power. A possible optimal solution for the largest heat transfer efficiency is proposed for the physical parameters of a real computer heat sink. We discuss the effect of the important parameters such as Reynolds number and thermal conductivities.