A CONCEPTUAL DESIGN OF THERMAL MODELING FOR EFFICIENTLY COOLING AN ARRAY OF HEATED

Abstract

This study aims at providing a means of evaluating heat transfer performance of electronic package systems so that technically sound design decisions can be made. Pressure implicit with splitting of operators (PISO), a control volume (CV) pressure-based scheme, was utilized to solve the governing equations for conjugate heat transfer phenomena, which covered the flow regimes from purely natural convection to mixed convection with a Reynolds number (Re) of up to 1000. It is found that the high Re flow is not a necessary condition to yield a better heat transfer effect. The application of a passive concept associated with an appropriate geometric arrangement would yield better cooling. When the number of chips and the associate heat release rate are increased, the case of purely natural convection with interchip openings has shown a better cooling capability. A crucial conclusion lies in how to efficiently employ the passive concept of fluid mechanics to induce a thinner boundary layer.