Optimizing electronic cooling: Harnessing potentials of impinging jet flows with metal foam heat sinks for superior thermal management

Abstract

Effective heat dissipation is essential for cooling power-intensive chips and densely packed electronics with significant heat output such as those used in data centers. This study explores the hybrid thermal management strategies that combine the use of impinging jet flow (IJF) and high-porosity metal foam (MF) heat sinks to enhance convective heat transfer. Unlike conventional jet cooling systems, the integration of metal foam introduces a highly conductive, porous medium that amplifies surface area, promotes flow mixing, and accelerates thermal diffusion — resulting in 1 - 2 times higher heat transfer compared to clear cases (CC). A 2D axisymmetric numerical model is developed in ANSYS Fluent using the Reynolds-Averaged Navier–Stokes (RANS) equations with the standard k-ε turbulence model. The setup features a single circular nozzle, aluminum target plate, aluminum metal foams with air as a cooling fluid. Key parameters including nozzle-to-plate spacing (IH = 2.8 – 8.5), Peclet number (Pe = 2200 – 17,000), and foam porosity (ε = 0.90 – 0.95) — are systematically varied. The findings indicate that minimizing porosity and internal heating (IH) substantially enhances heat transfer performance. A novel correlation for average Nusselt number (Nu ̅) has been developed, accompanied by an enhancement factor that quantifies the thermal improvement across the analyzed configurations. This work provides a robust framework for optimizing hybrid cooling systems and can be extended to explore alternative working fluids, foam geometries, and transient thermal loads in future studies