Impingement heat sinks for air cooled high power electronic modules

The subject of the present work is a parallel plate heat sink that is designed so that the air flow impinges at the fin tips and exhausts over the two open side faces. This type of design attempts to achieve an air flow direction that is substantially opposite to the heat flow direction within the fins so as to exploit the greater heat transfer effectiveness of counterflow heat exchange. A one dimensional model of the heat sink was developed with the assumption of air flow from the fin tips to the fin base. This simplified model was used to identify an initial heat sink geometry to cool a specific multichip module. Computational Fluid Dynamics models that account for the actual flow pattern within the heat sink were used to study a range of variations to the initial geometry and to identify the best geometry over the range examined. Experimental heat transfer and pressure drop data is reported for two heat sink prototypes. The test data is in good agreement with CFD predictions. Suitable correlations for the heat sink thermal resistance and pressure drop versus the air flow rate are developed. The developed heat sink demonstrated an area specific thermal resistancemore » better than 8.7 C (W/cm{sup 2}).« less