ABSTRACT For thermal management of high‐powered electronic components, a comprehensive investigation using metal foam fins (MFF) in heat sinks is analyzed in this work to optimize the thermal‐hydraulic performance of conventional plate‐fin heat sinks. Aluminum metal foam having porosity of 0.93 and 10 PPI is examined. A parametric optimization has been carried out on fixed and variable cross‐sectional area of the MFF with x ‐, y‐, and xy ‐directions keeping the fin volume constant for the Reynolds number (Re) range of 2000–8000. The finite volume method is used for solving the governing equations in 3D, and the RNG based k‐ε turbulent model is adopted. The SIMPLE algorithm is applied to couple differential equations for both solid‐liquid (water) phases under local thermal equilibrium condition. The numerical simulation is first validated with former experimental data of literature, and a good agreement is noticed. The results show that a higher Nusselt number ( Nu ), more frictional losses, and greater Performance Evaluation Criterion (PEC) are obtained using MFFs. These MFFs exhibit unexpected enhancement when a variable cross‐sectional MFF area is used, and the case y ‐4 and xy ‐1 demonstrate optimal results (i.e., the Nu ratio, friction factor ratio, and PEC are 6.12, 3.8, 3.92, and 6.25, 3.67, 4.06, at Re = 2000, respectively). In addition, the highest Nusselt number obtained is 438 at Re = 8000 and the greatest PEC is 4.06 at Re = 2000.
Ahmed et al. (Wed,) studied this question.