The Calculation of Thermal Resistance for Forced Air Cooling

Efficient heat dissipation of high power and a high heat flux density for power electronic devices are demanded, along with high reliability, high power density, miniaturization, and a light weight.One solution is to transfer heat from the electronic device to the surrounding environment rapidly by heat sink, and the main basis for the choice of heat sink is its thermal resistance.Therefore the thermal resistance calculation for a heat sink is key to its design in the cooling system of power electronic equipment.Based on an analysis of forced air cooling, a thermal resistance model of a heat sink is developed; a simple, accurate calculation method for evaluation of the thermal resistance in forced air cooling heat sink is proposed in this work.The calculation method is verified by an ANSYS simulation; the validity and accuracy of the method is verified by the experimental results found herein.