Sensitivity analysis in conjugate heat transfer for electronics cooling

This study presents sensitivity analysis in a conjugate heat transfer problem for electronics cooling. An algorithmic differentiation technique shown by Jemkov and Mathur was utilized to obtain the directional derivatives accurately in the sensitivity analysis. For a pin fin heat sink geometry, results of thermophysical property and flow parameter sensitivity analyses were shown and comparisons were made with the single-point simulations. The computed values indicate that the algorithmic differentiation technique used in this study lead to accurate results while accelerating design optimization applications significantly.