Thermal performances of finned heat sink filled with nano-enhanced phase change materials: Design optimization and parametric study

The present numerical study proposes a novel heat sink model with combined NANO -enhanced Phase Change Materials (NANOPCM) and pin fins for the thermal management of electronic devices. The govern-ing equations, model the heat transfer and the NANOPCM melting process, resolved by using CFD software (ANSYS Fluent) based on a finite volume method scheme. First, a comparison between heat sink with and without phase change material (PCM) was carried out. Then, different configurations of finned-heat sinks are studied to investigate the effect of 2 key parameters: the pin fin thickness and the pin fin numbers on the performance of the PCM-based heat sink. Furthermore, the effects of nanoparticles: graphene (GNP), copper oxide (CUO), and aluminium oxide (AL2O3) are investigated. The same volume fraction of nanopar-ticles 1.65%vol (5%wt weight fraction) was adopted to explore the most efficient NANOPCMs. Further, the impact of nanoparticle weight fractions (5%wt and 7%wt) are also detailed.This study demonstrated that the rise of pin fins volume fraction and the nanoparticles concentration don't improve the heat sink performances; the insertion of 9% pin fins volume fraction and the dispersion of 1.65 %vol graphene showed advanced performances (the operating time has been extended by 2.75 times). The results demonstrated also that the nanoparticle dispersion inside the finned heat sink does not have a significant effect on the thermal response due to the high thermal conductivity of the pin fins.(c) 2022 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.