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5/13/2013
amount of fins on a heat sink in order to figure out the lowest temperature of the computer chip by using Finite Elemental Analysis.
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Task: Thermal management of electronics is important to the performance of computers. To maintain reasonable temperatures, computer chips are out fitted with fin arrays to help transfer heat to the environment. Your task in this project is to design an optimal fin array with a limited amount of aluminum material. The material is to be made of aluminum whose properties are contained in the material library in ANSYS. Air is passed through the fin array as shown in the Figs. 1 and 2. The first figure shows air entering the fin array. The second illustrates a shroud which is used to force airflow to stay in the fin passages. The airflow is caused by a fan and the amount of air which passes through the array is governed by the type of fan and the distance between the fins. As the fins spacing is made smaller, the fan becomes less capable of passing air. As a consequence, the convective heat transfer coefficient is dependent on the fin spacing. Procedure: Design a fin array to minimize the temperature of the computer chip. Use analytical methods to approximate your numerical simulations. Compare your analytical methods to a parameter study. Complete a mesh independence. Present your work in a formal technical report, details of the report will be provided in lab.
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We first tried to find the temperature right at the surface where the base of the heat sink touches the computer chip. We found that we were off by a few degrees every time. We later realized that we wanted to find the temperate where the fin meets the base. In order to solve this problem we drew a path from the base to the bottom of the fin tip and observed the change in temperature (Figure 3.3). In order to verify the results, we also took the temperature at a single point where the base and fin intersect (Figure 3.4).
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The difference between the two is .043C so we would conclude that these results reflected one another.
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