Experimental investigation of heat transfer in impingement air cooled plate fin heat sinks

Impingement cooling of plate fin heat sinks is examined. Experimental measurements of thermal performance were performed with four heat sinks of various impingement inlet widths, fin spacings, fin heights, and airflow velocities. The percent uncertainty in the measured thermal resistance was a maximum of 2.6% in the validation tests. Using a simple thermal resistance model based on developing laminar flow in rectangular channels, the actual mean heat transfer coefficients are obtained in order to develop a simple heat transfer model for the impingement plate fin heat sink system. The experimental results are combined into a dimensionless correlation for channel average Nusselt number Nu similar to f(L*,Pr). We use a dimensionless thermal developing flow length, L* = (L/2)/(DhRePr), as the independent parameter. Results show that Nu similar to 1/root L*, similar to developing flow in parallel channels. The heat transfer model covers the practical operating range of most heat sinks, 0.01 < L* < 0.18. The accuracy of the heat transfer model was found to be within 11% of the experimental data taken on four heat sinks and other experimental data from the published literature at channel Reynolds numbers less than 1200. The proposed heat transfer model may be used to predict the thermal performance of impingement air cooled plate fin heat sinks for design purposes.