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The most common design of a heat sink is a metal device with many fins. The high thermal conductivity of the metal combined with its large surface area result in the rapid transfer of thermal energy to the surrounding, cooler, air. This cools the heat sink and whatever it is in direct thermal contact with.
The addition of fins to a heat sink increases its total surface area, resulting in greater cooling effectiveness. There are two types of cooling pads that can be used for air cooling: one is the honeycomb design and another one is excelsior. [citation needed] In all cases, the air has to be cooler than the object or surface from which it is ...
A heat sink is not a device with the "magical ability to absorb heat like a sponge and send it off to a parallel universe". [2] Natural convection requires free flow of air over the heat sink. If fins are not aligned vertically, or if fins are too close together to allow sufficient air flow between them, the efficiency of the heat sink will ...
Thermoelectric cooling uses the Peltier effect to create a heat flux at the junction of two different types of materials. A Peltier cooler, heater, or thermoelectric heat pump is a solid-state active heat pump which transfers heat from one side of the device to the other, with consumption of electrical energy, depending on the direction of the current.
This goal can be reached by using a large number of fine fins or by increasing the size of the heat sink itself. Although a bigger surface area leads to better cooling performance, there must be sufficient space between the fins to generate a considerable temperature difference between the fin and the surrounding air.
Thermodynamic heat pump cycles or refrigeration cycles are the conceptual and mathematical models for heat pump, air conditioning and refrigeration systems. [1] A heat pump is a mechanical system that transmits heat from one location (the "source") at a certain temperature to another location (the "sink" or "heat sink") at a higher temperature. [2]
Thermal conduction is the diffusion of thermal energy (heat) within one material or between materials in contact. The higher temperature object has molecules with more kinetic energy; collisions between molecules distributes this kinetic energy until an object has the same kinetic energy throughout.
The phenomenon of thermal expansion means that a temperature difference will have a corresponding difference in density across the loop. The warmer fluid on one side of the loop is less dense and thus more buoyant than the cooler fluid on the other side. The warmer fluid will "float" above the cooler fluid, and the cooler fluid will "sink ...