Performance Analysis of Heat Sinks Designed for Additive Manufacturing
Open Access
- Author:
- White, Andrew Scott
- Area of Honors:
- Mechanical Engineering
- Degree:
- Bachelor of Science
- Document Type:
- Thesis
- Thesis Supervisors:
- Stephen P Lynch, Thesis Supervisor
Jacqueline Antonia O'Connor, Thesis Honors Advisor - Keywords:
- Additive manufacturing
heat transfer
thermal management - Abstract:
- Significant levels of heat are generated in contemporary electronics, and next generation devices will continue to demand higher power despite decreasing size; therefore, highly effective cooling schemes are needed. Simultaneously, advances in metal additive manufacturing (AM) have enabled production of complex heat transfer devices previously impossible to traditionally manufacture. This thesis introduces three novel prototypes designed for AM to demonstrate the abilities of selective laser melting (SLM) processes in the fabrication of magnesium, aluminum, and copper heat sinks. A fourth prototype is also introduced to explore the applications of embedded heat pipes in reducing the temperature gradient along a heat sink fin. The performance of each of these prototypes have been determined experimentally, and the effects of specific material and design choices are analyzed. Comparisons of experimental results show that the copper and aluminum prototypes performed better than the magnesium due to increased thermal conductivity; however, the gains in thermal performance from aluminum to copper were much lower despite the larger difference in thermal conductivity. No gain in thermal performance was observed through the use of embedded heat pipes.