Forced Convection of Metallic Foam Heat Sink under Laminar Slot Jet Confined by Parallel Wall

Abstract

This investigation numerically explores the fluid flow and heat transfer characteristics of the metallic foam heat sink under the laminar slot jet confined by a parallel wall. The Prandtl number is 0.7, and the range of Reynolds numbers is 100–500. The parameters of interest in this work are the porosity (ϵ), pore density (PPI), effective solid conductivity (k _s *), jet nozzle width (W), ratio of the porous sink length to the jet nozzle width (L/W), ratio of the jet-to-sink distance to the jet nozzle width (C/W), and ratio of the porous sink height to the jet nozzle width (H/W). The simulation data reveal that the Nusselt number of the system with a metallic porous heat sink was much better than that of the system without a porous sink, for a given volumetric flow rate and value of (C+H)/W. The porous properties (such as ϵ and k _s *) and the system configurations (such as L/W and H/W) strongly influenced the cooling performance. The effect of the PPI, W, and C/W values on the heat transfer characteristics of the system was negligible. The effect of the fluid flow on the thermal results was examined. Finally, the correlations of the stagnation Nusselt number and the average Nusselt number were also determined using the numerical data for a system with the size of a common multi-chips module.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

The authors would like to thank the National Science Council of the Republic of China for financially supporting this research under contract NSC 92-2212-E-344-005 and NSC 93-2622-E-270-003-CC3.