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Thermal performance of aluminium‐foam CPU heat exchangers
Author(s) -
Mahdi H.,
Lopez P.,
Fuentes A.,
Jones R.
Publication year - 2006
Publication title -
international journal of energy research
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.808
H-Index - 95
eISSN - 1099-114X
pISSN - 0363-907X
DOI - 10.1002/er.1188
Subject(s) - heat exchanger , thermocouple , heat sink , heat spreader , natural convection , plate heat exchanger , materials science , thermal resistance , copper in heat exchangers , aluminium , plate fin heat exchanger , nuclear engineering , mechanical engineering , heat transfer , composite material , engineering , thermodynamics , physics
This study investigates the performance of existing central processing unit (CPU) heat exchangers and compares it with aluminium‐foam heat exchangers in natural convection using an industrial set‐up. Kapton flexible heaters are used to replicate the heat produced by a computer's CPU. A number of thermocouples are connected between the heater and the heat sink being used to measure the component's temperature. The thermocouples are also connected to a data‐acquisition card to collect the data using LabVIEW program. The values obtained for traditional heat exchangers are compared to published data to validate experiments and set‐up. The validated set‐up was then utilized to test the aluminium‐foam heat exchangers and compare its performance to that of common heat sinks. It is found that thermal resistance is reduced more than 70% by employing aluminium‐foam CPU heat exchangers. The results demonstrate that this material provides an advantage on thermal dissipation under natural convection over most available technologies, as it considerably increases the surface‐area‐to‐volume ratio. Furthermore, the aluminium‐foam heat exchangers reduce the overall weight. Copyright © 2005 John wiley & Sons, Ltd.