Numerical investigation on hydraulic and thermal characteristics of micro latticed pin fin in the heat sink

Abstract Micro pin fin heat sinks are an indispensable component in high-power electronic devices that are intended to enhance the device's thermal performance. In this study, the combination of conventional pin fin and lattice structure are used to propose a new design of micro latticed pin fin. The thermal performance and the impacts of the flow states and morphological types on the new design are investigated through fluid-thermal coupled numerical approach. The results reveal that overall pressure loss shows a slight improvement by using the latticed pin fin when compared with a solid pin fin. However, only a cubic body-centered-cubic pin fin has a positive influence on hydraulic and thermal performance, using a vertex cube achieves the opposite results. In terms of weight reduction, using the latticed pin fin can reduce the volume of the heat sink by approximately 14%-17%. Considering both pressure loss and Nusselt number (Nu), the improvement of the thermal-hydraulic performance index (η) of the BCC-PF (cubic body-centered-cubic pin fin) heat sink is more than 140% compared with the conventional pin fin heat sink.