Effect of Material Inhomogeneity on Thermal Performance of a Rheocast Aluminum Heatsink for Electronics Cooling

The relation between microstructural inhomogeneity and thermal conductivity of a rheocast componentmanufactured from two different aluminum alloys was investigated. The formation of two different primarya-Al particles was observed and related to multistage solidification process during slurry preparationand die cavity filling process. The microstructural inhomogeneity of the component was quantified as thefraction of a1-Al particles in the primary Al phase. A high fraction of coarse solute-lean a1-Al particles inthe primary Al phase caused a higher thermal conductivity of the component in the near-to-gate region. Avariation in thermal conductivity through the rheocast component of 10% was discovered. The effect of aninhomogeneous temperature-dependent thermal conductivity on the thermal performance of a largerheocast heatsink for electronics cooling in an operation environment was studied by means of simulation.Design guidelines were developed to account for the thermal performance of heatsinks with inhomogeneousthermal conductivity, as caused by the rheocasting process. Under the modeling assumptions, the simulationresults showed over 2.5% improvement in heatsink thermal resistance when the higher conductivity nearto-gate region was located at the top of the heatsink. Assuming homogeneous thermo-physical properties ina rheocast heatsink may lead to greater than 3.5% error in the estimation of maximum thermal resistanceof the heatsink. The variation in thermal conductivity within a large rheocast heatsink was found to beimportant for obtaining of a robust component design.CompCas