Experimental and numerical studies of the orientation effect on the natural convection heat dissipation of composite polymer heat sinks

Recent advances in manufacturing technologies and new composite materials for additive manufacturing created new opportunities for the novel heat sink made of heat-dissipating nonmetallic materials. In this study, two commercially available thermal conductive filaments (copper filled filament and Ice9 Flex filament) from two main groups of metal filled and carbon filled thermal conductive composites were characterised and used for 3D printing of heat sinks. The possibility and the performance of using the selected commercial composite polymers for applications in electronics cooling was experimentally and numerically investigated. Due to the possibility of change in the angle of position of electronics, two different orientation angles (rotation about the x and z-axes) for angles of 0º-90º with 10º increment was studied. It was found that carbon filled filament heat sink at 90º for rotation about the x-axis had the best heat dissipation performance (about 28% higher than 0º). This case also showed the lowest average base temperature of all cases studied. The rotation about the z-axis was showed to weaken the thermal performance of all heat sinks due to limiting airflow between fins