A Numerical Assessment of the Performance Improvement of a PCM-Based Heat Sink for the Thermal Management of Electronics Due to Introduction of Highly-Conductive Nanoparticles

摘要

A numerical analysis was conducted to assess the performance improvement of a PCM-based heat sink used for thermal management of electronics due to introduction of highly-conductive nanoparticles. A prototype unit using a paraffin with uniformly-dispersed copper nanoparticles was considered. The effective thermophysical properties of the nano-enhanced paraffin with various volume fractions (0, 0.01, 0.02, 0.05 and 0.1) of the copper nanoparticles were predicted using the mixture model and effective media theory. Under an imposed heat flux of 2 W/cm2, the transient solid-liquid phase change (melting) heat transfer processes up to 300 second were solved using the control volume method. Numerical results showed that at a constant heating load, the maximum temperature rise on the heated surface was mitigated with increasing fraction of the nanoparticles. The performance of the heat sink was improved considerably in relation to the enhanced thermal conductivity of paraffin in the presence of the highly-conductive nanoparticles.