Numerical Assessment of Heat Transfer and Entropy Generation of a Porous Metal Heat Sink for Electronic Cooling Applications

In the present study, the thermal performance of an electronic equipment cooling system is investigated. The heat sink used in the current cooling system consists of a porous channel with a rectangular cross-section that is assumed to be connected directly to the hot surface of an electronic device. In this modeling, a fully developed flow assumption is used. The Darcy–Brinkman model was used to determine the fluid flow field. Since using the local thermal equilibrium (LTE) model may provide results affected by the error in metal foams, in the present research, an attempt has first been made to examine the validity range of this model. The local thermal non-equilibrium (LTNE) model taking into account the viscous dissipation effect was then used to determine the temperature field. To validate the numerical solution, the computed results were compared with other studies, and an acceptable agreement was observed. Analysis of the temperature field shows that if the fluid–solid-phase thermal conductivity ratio is 1 or the Biot number has a large value, the difference between the temperature of the solid phase and the fluid phase decreases. Moreover, the effect of important hydrodynamic parameters and the porous medium characteristics on the field of hydrodynamic, heat, and entropy generation was studied. Velocity field analysis shows that increasing the pore density and reducing the porosity cause an increase in the shear stress on the walls. By analyzing the entropy generation, it can be found that the irreversibility of heat transfer has a significant contribution to the total irreversibility, leading to a Bejan number close to 1. As a guideline for the design of a porous metal heat sink for electronic equipment, the use of porous media with low porosity reduces the total thermal resistance and improves heat transfer, reducing the total irreversibility and the Bejan number. Moreover, the increasing of pore density increases the specific porous surface; consequently, it reduces the total irreversibility and Bejan number and improves the heat transfer.