Heat sinks in electronics cooling

A heat sink is a passive heat exchanger that transfers heat generated by an electronic device to the air, where it is dissipated away from the device. Air velocity, choice of material, protrusion design and surface treatment are factors that affect the performance of a heat sink.

Heat sinks are commonly used in electronics products to remove heat generated from active electronic circuits in a compact and efficient manner. Typically, a heat sink body consists of fins, to provide a large surface area for air flow, in order to maximize the cooling of the component on which it is placed.

heat sink

The Heat Sink command in an electronics cooling study creates an idealized version of your as-modeled heat sink to reduce the time to solution without compromising solution accuracy.

Note: Heat sink idealization requires an extruded heat sink design in which the fin direction and the gap between them are invariant, and the heat sink is aligned with the model coordinate system. If the heat sink does not meet these design criteria, the study can still be solved, but the heat sink will not be idealized.