Author(s)

DJ de Kock and J.A. Visser

Abstract

Heat sink designers have to balance a number of conflicting parameters to maximise the performance of a heat sink. This must be achieved within the given constraints of size or volume of the heat sink as well as the mass or material cost of the heat sink. This multi-parameter problem lends itself naturally to optimisation techniques. Traditionally, an experimental approach was used where different heat sink designs were constructed and their performance measured. This approach is both time-consuming and costly. More recently, numerical CFD techniques have been used, but mostly on a trial- and-error basis. This leads to long design cycles and is basically the numerical equivalent of the experimental approach. A better approach is to combine a semi-empirical simulation pro

Keywords