Numerical Design and Optimisation of a Novel Heatsink using ANSYS Steady-State Thermal Analysis

This paper presents a numerical study of thermal performance on heatsink configurations for power electronic devices. The analysis was based on numerical modelling using the CFD software ANSYS 19.1 Steady-State Thermal. The heatsink geometrical features are investigated and compared with each other. The effects of material selection, total surface area, temperature uniformity and maximum surface temperature are assessed. The increase of surface area, implementation of geometrical features, and high thermal conductive material was found to reduce the maximum surface temperature and improve overall thermal dissipation capacity. With a constrained base (50mm × 50mm × 5mm), the novel designs incorporating secondary branches lead to best thermal performance, achieving up to 50% improvement in thermal efficiency. It was concluded that the implementation of nature inspired geometrical features and material configuration, studied in this work exhibits significant benefits for applications in heatsink for electronic devices.