Height Effect on Heat-Transfer Characteristics of Aluminum-Foam Heat Sinks

Abstract

This study investigates and demonstrates the two conflicting effects of the height on the cooling performance of aluminum-foam heat sinks, under the impinging-jet flow condition. In addition, the nonlocal thermal equilibrium phenomena are also investigated. When the H∕D (the height to diameter ratio) of the aluminum-foam heat sinks is reduced from 0.92 to 0.15, the Nusselt number of aluminum-foam heat sinks is found to first increase and then decrease. The increase in the Nusselt number is caused by the increased percentage of the cooling air reaching the top surface of the waste-heat generation block, resulting from the reduced flow resistance. The decrease in the Nusselt number is mainly caused by the reduction in the heat-transfer area between the cooling air and the solid phase of the aluminum-foam heat sink. As the porosity and pore density decrease, the Nusselt number increases and the convective heat transfer is enhanced. The correlation between the Nusselt and Reynolds numbers for each of the 15 samples studied in this work is reported. For samples with a H∕D>0.31, the temperature difference between the solid and gas phases of aluminum-foam heat sinks decreases with the increase of the distance from the heated surface. The non-local thermal equilibrium regime is observed to exist at low Reynolds number and small dimensionless height. On the other hand, for samples with a H∕D⩽0.31, the temperature difference first increases and then decreases with the increase of the distance from the heated surface; the maximum temperature difference is located at z∕H≒0.25 and is independent of the Reynolds number.