CPU heat sink cooling by triangular shape micro-pin-fin: Numerical study

Abstract

The cooling capability of heat sinks is important for a central processing unit (CPU). In this work, simulation has been done to study heat transfer (HT) in a heat sink (HS) mounted on the triangular cylinder chip of a CPU is studied, to explore the thermofluid behaviour of the designed micro-pin-fin heat sink. Air cooling methods are used for heat extraction. This numerical work considers the effects of inlet turbulence intensity (TI) and fin diameter (D) of the micro-pin-fin on the performance of the heat sink. Turbulent SST model is applied to capture turbulence regime in the system. The heat transfer and pressure coefficient were obtained at different Reynolds number (Re) (i.e. different inlet velocities). As shown in this study, the Nusselt number (Nu) increases with increase in air flow velocity which enhance the heat extraction from CPU.