In this study presented by Randall Mathieu of Robicon, a liquid cooled heat sink is simulated to determine the maximum heat sink temperature as well as the temperature rise of the coolant liquid at various flow rates and component power levels. The geometry is constructed using Icepak's library of primary objects and fitted with a high quality mesh involving about 45,000 cells. Special care is taken to ensure that the mesh is sufficiently fine near areas where the gradients of temperature and velocity are large. Increasing flow rate from 5 GPM to 10 GPM provides significant temperature reductions but going beyond 10 GPM produces much lower reductions.
Water is found to be the most effective coolant.