Effects of Fin Type and High Latent Heat Paraffin‐Based Phase Change Material Volume Fraction on Heat Sinks Cooling Performance

In electronic components, systems for thermal management considerably affect the components’ performance. Rapid advances in computer processing unit chips have led to substantial increases in their power consumption and heat generation. Many researchers have focused on studying the use of phase change materials (PCMs) to stabilize the temperature of electronic components. These materials regulate the temperature by absorbing latent heat during phase transitions. However, despite their high latent heat capacity, the low thermal conductivity of PCMs results in prolonged phase change duration time. In order to address this limitation, both industry and academia have directed significant attention toward enhancing the heat transfer efficiency of PCMs. This study investigates the effect of the volume fraction of PCM, specifically paraffin, on the thermal performance of heat sinks used in electronic components. The research compares the temperature profiles of heat sinks not equipped with fins, with circular pin fins, and with square pin fins under various PCM volume fractions to evaluate their performance while a high latent heat PCM was used. By way of designing different heat sinks, PCM volume fractions, and different power levels to investigate the final base temperature, PCM temperature distribution uniformity, and Stefan number (Ste). When the fin volume fraction was fixed at 9% for heat sink equipped with circular pin fins, and with square pin fins, the heat sink equipped with circular pin fins exhibited superior thermal performance to the square fins and no fins heat sinks. Moreover, among all examined heat sinks that equipped with circular pin fins exhibited the lowest base temperature, highest heat transfer efficiency, and smallest rate of increase in base temperature. In addition, the higher PCM volume fraction at 0.9 shows the lower base temperature. For all designed heat sinks, the cooling effect of base temperature was achieved by adding PCM which is stronger when the heat flux was 1.6 and 2.4 kW/m 2 than 0.8 kW/m 2 . The improvement achieved in the cooling performance with an increase in φ was greater at a higher heat flux. On the other hand, at a heat flux of 2.4 kW/m 2 and PCM volume fraction of 0.9, the heat sink equipped with square pin fins exhibits better PCM temperature distribution uniformity than the heat sink equipped with circular pin fins and with no fins, and measured points maximum temperature differences are 3.75, 6.30, and 9.75°C, respectively. Furthermore, this study examined how the Ste affected the time it took to reach different temperatures in the three designed heat sinks. For all three designs, the time it took to reach different temperatures decreased with an increase in the Ste. When the Ste was 12.55, among the designed heat sinks, that equipped with square pin fins was the slowest in reaching 50°C. However, at Stes of 25.10 and 37.65 that equipped with circular pin fins was the slowest in reaching 50°C. Moreover, at Stes of 25.10 and 37.65 that equipped with circular pin fins was the slowest in reaching 55 and 60°C.