The Effect of Contact Ratio on the Cooling Performance of an Aluminum-Foam Heat Sink With a Solid Aluminum Core

To enhance the cooling performance of a metal-foam heat sink, this work increases the surface area of the heat sink wall in contact with the electronic component by vertically placing a solid aluminum cylinder in the center (i.e., core) of an aluminum-foam heat sink. The contact ratio, defined as the ratio of the surface area of the extended heat sink wall in contact with the electronic component to the solid-fluid interface area inside the aluminum-foam heat sink, was systematically varied to experimentally investigate the heat transfer characteristics. The experimental results on the measured Nusselt number, solid-phase and gas-phase temperatures and temperature difference between the solid and gas of the aluminum foam under different contact ratios were reported and discussed in this work.