Passive heat transfer enhancement by 3D printed Pitot tube based heat sink

Abstract 3D printing, also referred to as additive manufacturing — AM in the case of metal materials, allows fabricating complex shaped parts and devices in a single step. Extreme flexibility of AM techniques could pave the way to a revolution in conceiving heat transfer devices in the near future. Along this way, we designed and fabricated by AM an innovative heat sink incorporating Pitot tubes for realizing passive heat transfer enhancement. Preliminary tests show that the proposed heat sink allows up to 98% heat transfer augmentation, as compared to conventional heat sinks. We hope that this study will help in encouraging the community to explore novel approaches thus moving towards the design of new devices fully exploiting the 3D printing flexibility in the field of thermal engineering.