THERMAL ANALYSIS OF A HEAT SINK FOR ELECTRONICS COOLING

Heat transfer is a discipline of thermal engineering that concern the generation, use, conversion and exchange of thermal energy, heat between physical systems. Heat transfer is classified in to various mechanisms such as heat conduction, convection, thermal radiation & transfer of energy by phase change. Most of the electronic equipment are low power and produce negligible amount of heat in their operation. Some devices, such as power transistors, CPU's, & power diodes produce a significant amount of heat. so sufficient measures are need to be taken so as to prolong their working life and reliability. Here, we deal with the design of a heat sink of Aluminum alloy for cooling of a PCB of dimension 233.3×160 with FPGA, fine pitch BGA package, which dissipates 19.5 watts of heat energy. The whole mode of heat transfer is carried out through forced convection with help of a cooling fan of specific velocity. Heat sinks are passive components that cool a device by dissipating heat into surrounding air. We need to introduce discontinuities in the fin surface to break up the boundary layer. This can be accomplished by cross cutting an extruded 'Al' heat sink to create a segmented fin. Heat sinks have a wide range of applications mainly in micro processors, BGA's, PCB's, Airplanes, Satellites, Space vehicles & missiles.