EXPERIMENTAL INVESTIGATIONS ON HEAT TRANSFER ENHANCEMENT IN AN ELECTRONIC DEVICE

Miniaturization of electronic devices has increased the heat generation rate within the device. Dissipation of this excess heat is of utmost importance. The present paper aims to reduce this excess heat using the phase change material and finned geometry. An aluminum heat sink was fabricated and tested with different cases viz., case 1-without fins and without PCM, case 2-with fins and without PCM, case 3-without fins and with PCM and case 4-with fins and with PCM, for different power settings of 12, 16, 20 and 24 W. It was observed that the case-4 took the largest time of over 180 minutes for the electronic device to reach 60^oC for 12 W power. For 24 W case, this time was substantially reduced to about 35 minutes. Amongst all cases studied, the best performance was observed with case-4. Therefore, the present investigations recommend the combined use of phase change material and fins for the efficient operation of an electronic device. These findings may provide important guidelines for the efficient design of an electronic thermal management system.