On the use of second law based cost functions in plate fin heat sink design

This paper discusses the use of the second law in heat sink design. A new entropy-based cost function is proposed and compared with existing heat sink cost functions. A case study of a plate fin heat sink points out that this newly developed cost function offers a heat sink which is more than twice as efficient as a heat sink designed with the traditional thermal resistance minimization objective. The effects of this new heat sink design on data center cooling systems are considered and found to be significantly improving the system efficiency and waste heat recovery.