Open-Celled Aluminum Foam Heat Sinks for Electronics Cooling with Axial Fan Impinging Flow

The heat transfer performance of open-celled aluminum foam heat sinks under axial fan impinging cooling flow is experimentally studied.Three open-celled aluminum foam samples with different pore sizes and identical porosity(e=0.92) were tested.The overall thermal resistance and temperature difference on the base plate of the heat sink were measured and compared with those of the conventional plain-fin heat sink.The results obtained show that,with only 50% of the total volume and weight of the conventional fin heat sink,the aluminum foam heat sink can achieve a similar cooling performance and more uniform temperature distribution on the heated base plate.The aluminum foam heat sink has further potential for optimization in terms of foam thickness,pore density and porosity,leading to a further enhancement of its overall heat dissipation performance under axial fan impinging cooling for power electronics.