Thermal performance improvement of a heat sink using phase change materials and fins.

This study proposes an investigation on the performance of a passive cooling system of electronic equipment, with a heat sink that has different numbers of fins with a constant volume fraction of fin thickness and integrating a phase change material. A numerical study was carried to simulate conjugate solid-fluid heat transfer, which is performed by using finite volume-based commercial Ansys Fluent software, characteristic parameters, such as melting period, the heat sink base temperature, and the number and spacing of fins, were investigated. The results showed that the heat sink with four fins has the highest thermal conductivity enhancement, and a lower base temperature compared to the other cases, i.e., two, three, and without fins. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]