A Study on the Design of M.2 SSD Heat Sink

Siah, Johnny Chen Qiang (2022) A Study on the Design of M.2 SSD Heat Sink. Final Year Project (Bachelor), Tunku Abdul Rahman University College.

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Abstract

One of the main interests of this study is to investigate the benefits of adding perforation on M.2 SSD heatsink. In the current market, none of the SSD Heat Sinks are with perforation even though studies found that the addition of perforation on heatsinks for other applications, i.e., HVAC systems, facilitates thermal dissipation. Thus, in this study, Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulations on both the market available plate fins heatsink and pinned fin heatsink with and without the addition of perforations have been explored using ANSYS Fluent. A total of three parameters are studied which are fin types (plate or pinned), perforation shape and perforation size (diameter). It is found that heatsinks with perforations, regardless of fin types, perforation shape or size, outperform the heatsinks without perforations. Besides, it is discovered that pinned fin heatsinks with perforations are able to achieve a lower temperature as compared to plate fin heatsinks with the same perforation shape and diameter. Pinned fin heatsink with perforation is capable of improving the airflow mixing and air interaction with heatsink heat transfer area to create a practical cooling effect that will improve the thermal-hydraulic properties of the heatsink. To further discover the potential of the perforations in improving thermal dissipation, two types of perforation shapes were used which are circular perforation and hexagonal perforation. In general, pinned finned heatsink with hexagonal perforation has higher Nusselt number when compared with plate fin heatsinks with a similar diameter of perforation. In terms of the diameter of the perforation, diameter of 1mm, 2mm and 3mm were all applied on both the circular and hexagonal perforation heatsinks. Based on the results shown in chapter 4, it is interesting to found that the larger diameter of the perforation has better thermal dissipation than the smaller perforation diameter. This is attributed to more airflow in between the fins, increasing the flow mixing rate and heat transfer rate. Lastly, pinned fin heatsink with hexagonal perforation of 3mm has the highest Nusselt number and the lowest fin temperature among all the 14 models. It contributes to 11.8% and 12.3% increment in Nusselt number as compared to the existing plate fin heat sink and pinned fin heat sink, respectively. This indicates that there is a potential for improving M.2 SSD thermal dissipation using pinned fin heat sink with hexagonal perforations