Heat transfer from square pin-fin heat sinks using air impingement cooling

Experimental and numerical results are presented for heat transfer from a C4 mounted organic land grid array (OLGA) thermal test chip cooled by air impingement. Five heat sink geometries were investigated for Reynolds numbers ranging from 9,000 to 26,000. The dimensionless nozzle-to-heat sink vertical spacing z/D was varied between 2 and 12. In this study, we investigate the interactions between heat sink geometry, flow conditions and nozzle setting and how they affect the convective heat transfer and overall cooling of the test chip as measured by total thermal resistance θ_ja. Optimizing fin arrays by minimizing the overall heat sink thermal resistance instead of focusing solely on maximizing the heat transfer from the fins is shown to be a better design criterion. We also provide results that show cooling performance gains can be obtained by inserting a deflector plate above the heat sink.