2018 ASME K-16 STUDENT DESIGN CHALLENGE:
ADDITIVE MANUFACTURING HEAT SINK DESIGN
UTA MTL: APPLICATION OF ADDITIVE MANUFACTURING IN HEAT SINK
OPTIMIZATION
Darshan Babu Ravoori
Graduate Student – Department of Mechanical
and Aerospace Engineering
The University of Texas at Arlington
Arlington, Texas, USA
Christian Lowery
Undergraduate Student – Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
The University of Texas at Arlington
Arlington, Texas, USA
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
An optimized heat sink design is presented that takes the
advantage of additive manufacturing (AM) for significant
performance improvement compared to the present state-of-the-
art. Additive manufacturing enables complex geometries that
outperform designs produced through conventional
manufacturing techniques. The heat sink is designed to enhance
surface area for greater heat transfer and reduce pressure drop.
Heat sink performance is evaluated by modeling in Solidworks
and finite element analysis of heat transfer and fluid flow in
ANSYS CFX. These analyses demonstrate nearly 40%
improvement in the figure of merit of the 3D printed heat sink
compared to the conventional design. Further, it is shown that
temperature reduction can be obtained in the proposed heat sink
at much lower air flowrates. These improvements are made
possible through AM capabilities which facilitate localized
placement of fins with varying thickness and of complicated fin
structure design.
DESIGN DESCRIPTION
The primary goal in this exercise was to design a 3D printed
heat sink that minimizes a specific performance parameter based
on temperature at the middle of the heat sink base and pressure
drop caused by the heat sink. In order to come up with an optimal
design, candidate heat sink designs were built in SolidWorks and
each design was tested through a finite-element simulation of
heat transfer and fluid flow around the heat sink. The geometry
of simulation was matched to that specified for experimental
characterization of the heat sink. By doing so, it was ensured that
the heat sink designs are tested in realistic scenarios.
Specifically, since the key temperature of interest is at the middle
of the base of the heat sink, that specific temperature was
extracted from simulations and used for calculation of the
UTA MTL
Aditya Krishna Ganesh Ram
Graduate Student – Department of Mechanical
and Aerospace Engineering
The University of Texas at Arlington
Arlington, Texas, USA
performance parameter. Design features that result in reduction
of that specific temperature were explored and optimized.
The design approach followed in this work is based on past
literature of heat sink design optimization using additive
manufacturing [1-3]. Past work has explored branched fin
designs, which take advantage of the additive manufacturing
capability to ensure efficient heat transfer while requiring
minimum pressure drop. Keeping this in mind, a baseline design
was first carried out, and multiple modifications were introduced
in subsequent iterations while evaluating each iteration through
finite-element simulations. Each iteration was designed keeping
in mind the capabilities of additive manufacturing to introduce
small, almost-arbitrary features.
The final heat sink design that results in optimal value of the
performance parameter is shown in Figure 1. The first feature to
note is the width of the rectangular fins. Proposed design utilizes
fins that range in width from 1 mm to 4 mm. Most of the fins are
1 mm in width; this order of magnitude is handled best by using
additive manufacturing rather than the plethora of other
conventional manufacturing methods. The second feature to note
is the length of the rectangular fins. Near the top of the optimized
heat sink design, the rectangular fins vary in length from 9 mm
to 15 mm. Additive manufacturing can produce these fins with
ease while conventional manufacturing methods would have to
be tailored to produce these fins. The third feature to note are the
fillets on the front face of the heat sink. These fillets are all 0.2
mm in radius. While these can be produced with ease and
consistency with additive manufacturing, it would be nearly
impossible with traditional manufacturing methods. The fourth
and final feature to note is the circular cut near the base of the
heat sink. Conventional manufacturing methods such as mills
would have difficulty accessing the space in which the cut needs
to occur. However, additive manufacturing will not consider this
1

feature to be a cut. It will create this circular line just as it would
create a straight segment. Overall, additive manufacturing is
advantageous to use as a manufacturing technique for the heat
sink because the geometry is complex, and the features are
relatively small.
Figure 1: Proposed Heat sink design
DESIGN ANALYSIS
First, the principle of creating branches for improving heat
sink performance is confirmed by analyzing a 2D plate for heat
transfer and observing the path of heat transfer using Hypermesh
Optistruct software as shown in Figure 2
The bottom of the plate was given a heat flux of
10000W/m2 and the ambient temperature was given as boundary
condition on all 3 sides of the plate. As can be seen from the
2018 ASME K-16 STUDENT DESIGN CHALLENGE:
ADDITIVE MANUFACTURING HEAT SINK DESIGN
UTA MTL
optimization analysis, a primary design with various fin branches
from a base lump is designed using fins of width 1 mm. The
designed fin was then analyzed using ANSYS CFX for its
performance.
Figure 2: 2D Plate optimization result from Optistruct
Figure 3: Initial Heat sink design
The analysis setup is created by considering a fluid domain
for simulating the flow of air in the experimental set up proposed
to be used for heat sink testing. A fixed flowrate boundary
condition is implemented at the inlet face of the simulation
geometry. Room temperature properties of air are assumed. The
outlet boundary condition is fixed as 0 atm relative pressure.
Three domains are created for the setup - copper base,
aluminum fin and air. The base of the copper is given a heat flux
boundary condition of 10000 W/m2, as prescribed in the
proposed characterization experiments. The fluid domain was
supplied with the inlet and outlet boundary conditions as
discussed above. The mesh size was manually reduced to the
value 4e-3 as the maximum face size. The two key outputs of this
simulation are the thermal resistance RT, defined as the ratio of
temperature rise at the center of heat sink face to the total power,
and ∆P, the overall pressure drop.
Topology optimization is carried out manually by analyzing
the temperature profile for each of the design initially
considered. The fin widths used for extension ranged from 1 to
4 mm. One of the conclusions from this work was that increasing
2

surface area of the fins exposed to air near the edges of the heat
sink is particularly helpful. This was similar to the conclusion
made from reference [4, 5]. The initial design Figure 3 has high
temperatures near the edges that gave an idea to improve the
effective surface area of the fins at those areas.
The final design Figure 1 with branched cross fins at the top
and some areas in the edges was found to significantly improve
the surface area exposed to the air. The branch was made very
dense near the bottom of the fins to enhance the rate of heat
transfer. Another reason for fixing denser fins in the bottom is
that heat transfer occurs faster if the temperature gradient is high.
Since the top area of the fins doesn’t see heat directly from the
copper, initially it will be in a much lower temperature and hence
the gradient of temperature will be higher which further drives
the heat to move upwards and the base cools faster. The fact that
the surface area can be increased by curving a surface was also
used in some locations.
Figure 4: Temperature profile of the optimized heat
sink
FIGURE OF MERIT
The figure of merit calculation is carried out by calculating
the heat sink cost and pumped air cost for 20,000 operating
hours.
1
FOM = (1)
Total cost∗(Tc3 −Tamb )
Total Cost = Cost of heat sink + Cost of pumped air (2)
$
Cost of pumped air = P ∗ t ∗ (3)
kWh
P = V ∗ ∆P (4)
From the fin design Figure 1 volume of the fin structure is
0.000106 m3 and from thermal performance analysis Fig. 4
where the center temperature is 309 K for given ambient
temperature of 298.1 K, FOM is found to be 0.0032 $-1K-1for a
given volumetric flow rate of 50 CFM. Considering density of
bulk aluminum A357 to be 2600 kg/m3 the mass of the heat sink
2018 ASME K-16 STUDENT DESIGN CHALLENGE:
ADDITIVE MANUFACTURING HEAT SINK DESIGN
UTA MTL
is found to be 0.27 kg. While the density of additive
manufactured part is known to be lower than that of bulk
materials, bulk data is used for now due to lack of specifications
about the GE additive manufacturing process proposed to be
used for heat sink printing.
For the case of 50 CFM, pressure drop ∆P between upstream
and downstream of the fin is found to be 24.8 Pa from ANSYS
CFX analysis. The total pumping power required to overcome
the pressure loss across fin and at 50 CFM is estimated to be 0.58
W. Cost of pumped air is found to be $11.7 using equation 3 and
total cost is $28.3. Using equation 1 figure of merit for the
proposed design is 0.0032 $-1K-1.
The FOM for the proposed design compares favorably with
that of a conventional heat sink with plate fins, for which the
resulting temperature distribution is shown in Figure 5, and the
resulting FOM is found to be 0.0018 $-1K-1. Table 1 compares
the proposed heat sink design with the conventional plate fin
design in terms of thermal resistance RT, pressure drop ∆P, as
well as the product of the two. These numbers highlight the
improved performance in the proposed heat sink design in terms
of both temperature reduction and pressure drop.
Table 1: Comparison of ∆𝐏 and RT for the proposed and
conventional design at 50 CFM
DESIGN Flow RT ∆𝐏 ∆𝐏. 𝐑 𝐓
Rate(CFM) (K/W) (Pa) (Pa. K/W)
Proposed 50 1.7 24.8 41.6
Conventional 50 2 34.3 68.5
Figure 5: Temperature profile of conventional Heat
sink
PERFORMACE CURVE (ΔP∙RT)
Figure 6 provides the performance curve of ΔP∙RT. Analysis
is performed to find the ΔP∙RT by varying the air flow rate. The
area under the curve is approximately 9100 K Pa CFM W-1.
ΔP∙RT for different flow rates are given under Table 2. RT does
not change much with increase in air flow rate (Figure 7), which
indicates that convective flow in the heat sink is near-optimal,
3
 2018 ASME K-16 STUDENT DESIGN CHALLENGE:
ADDITIVE MANUFACTURING HEAT SINK DESIGN
UTA MTL

and that most of the temperature drop occurs due to thermal
conduction resistance in the heat sink material. On the other
hand, increase in air flow rate increases ΔP, that led to large
ΔP∙RT. This shows that this heat sink design can be operated at
low flowrates without much loss of performance.
voids could develop, whereas in a conventional manufacturing
method, no new voids would develop during the process. Thus,
additive manufacturing will lead to a decrease in the mechanical
strength of the heat sink. Such trade-offs are very important to
consider and account for in practical design and manufacturing
of heat sinks.

ACKNOWLEDEMENT
We hereby acknowledge the valuable assistance provided
by Dr. Ankur Jain in every step of our work. Assistant from Dr.
Robert Taylor in the form of discussions on additive
manufacturing and access to Hypermesh packages is also
gratefully acknowledged.

APPENDIX A: REFERENCES

[1] E.M. Dede, S.N. Joshi, and Feng Zhou, “Topology

Optimization, Additive Layer Manufacturing, and
Experimental Testing of an Air-Cooled Heat Sink”
Journal of Mechanical Design, vol. 137, Nov., pp.
111403-1-9, 2015.
Figure 6: Performance curve for the optimized design [2] Dong-Kwon Kim, “Thermal optimization of branched-
fin heat sinks subject to a parallel flow” International
Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer, vol. 77, Oct., pp. 278-
287, 2014.
[3] X. Qu, N. Pagaldipti, R. Fleury, J. Saiki, “Thermal
Topology Optimization in OptiStruct Software,” In Proc.
17th AIAA/ISSMO Multidisciplinary Analysis
Optimization Conference ’06, 2016.
[4] Dong-Kwon Kim, “Thermal optimization of plate-fin
heat sinks with fins of variable thickness under natural
convection” International Journal of Heat and Mass
Transfer, vol. 55, Jan., pp. 752-761, 2012.
[5] Dong-Kwon Kim, “Thermal optimization of plate-fin
heat sinks with variable fin thickness” International
Figure 7: RT and ∆P of proposed design as function of CFM Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer, vol. 53, Dec., pp.
5988-5995, 2010.
ADDITIVE MANUFACTURING
Identifying the advantages of using additive manufacturing APPENDIX B: ADDITIONAL SUPPORTING
to create the heat sink required a detailed discussion of the many MATERIALS
features that are present in the heat sink. The significance of
feature sizes and manufacturing difficulty with traditional TABLE 2: ∆𝐏. 𝐑 𝐓 for Different Flow Rates of the Optimized
manufacture methods are discussed in section 2. Additive Heat Sink Design
manufacturing works best when there are no obvious patterns
present within a model – the proposed heat sink design fits this Flow ∆𝐓 Q RT ∆𝐏 ∆𝐏. 𝐑 𝐓
description. Rate (K) (W) (K/W) (Pa) (Pa. K/W)
A key disadvantage of using additive manufacturing for the (CFM)
heat sink lies in the mechanical strength of the heat sink. In 50 10.9 25.8 0.422 24.8 10.5
additive manufacturing, material is added to create the desired 75 10.9 25.8 0.422 55.9 23.6
part instead of taken away as in conventional methods. Although 100 10.4 25.8 0.403 89.1 35.9
this aspect of additive manufacturing is a benefit in designing 125 10.1 25.8 0.391 140.1 54.8
complex geometries, it can decrease the strength of the material. 150 9.9 25.8 0.384 181.6 69.7
Strength decreases because the material is fused together layer 175 9.9 25.8 0.382 255.3 97.6
by layer. During this process, more irregularities such as small 200 9.8 25.8 0.381 291.2 110.9