Design of a cooling system for an electronic component within a manufacturing process

The present case study illustrates the design of a thermal management system based on fins for the cooling of an electronic board installed on a manufacturing robot. The case study introduces the analytical and numerical methodologies for the study of fins for the development of an accurate thermal design. Specific Nusselt number correlations for finned surfaces are considered, and the finite volume method is implemented for obtaining steady-state and transient numerical solutions. In particular, temperature profiles are estimated and compared with the analytical solution. Pros and cons of the two approaches are briefly discussed, and the matching of the two approaches is shown for the proposed case study. The provided methodologies can be easily implemented in calculation spreadsheets to obtain flexible design tools.