Rapid design of heat sinks for electronic cooling using computational and experimental tools

Design of electronic cooling systems for high volume manufacturing within the time frame of months for increasingly aggressive performance and cost requirements is difficult without the use of sophisticated computational and experimental tools. Described here are the tools and methods for evaluating designs of electronic cooling heat sinks. Examples using thermal finite element analysis (FEA) and computational fluid dynamics (CFD) are presented. Quantitative data from wind tunnel testing compare well with model results. Qualitative data from infrared (IR) spectroscopy provides insight on the interfacial effect. Issues associated with the interface resistance are discussed.