Experimental and numerical investigation on fluid flow and heat transfer behaviour of foam cladded pin fin heat sink

As technology advances, there is a growing demand for more efficient cooling solutions in electronics. Open-cell metal foams offer a unique solution, combining the strength of metals with the characteristics of foams, including being lightweight and having a high heat transfer area-to-volume ratio. Fully covering heatsinks with porous materials results in high pressure drop values, which is undesirable for electronics cooling. This study proposes a novel design that incorporates cladded aluminum foams on the pin fins within a heatsink. The hydrothermal performance of the proposed design is experimentally and numerically investigated. The results indicate that increasing the cladding thickness enhances heat transfer performance while increasing the pressure drop. For a heatsink with a pin fin diameter of 5 mm at the Reynolds number of 1121, the foam thickness of 5 mm depicts 46.5 % higher hydrothermal performance compared to a pin fin heatsink without porous while a fully porous covered heatsink depicts 38.9 % higher hydrothermal performance.