[phsieh2005]

Hi,

I am wondering if someone here can suggest an approach for modeling heat sinks.

Ideally, we want to have at lest 3 cells across the gaps between 2 fins. However, this usually requires significant number of cells to be generated. If one can uses hex element, then, maybe one can use higher aspect ratio for the cells, hence smaller cell counts. But, this will be a very tedious job, and Autodesk CFD probably only supports tet element I believe.

Any suggestion?

Pei-Ying

[marktm250xc]

The gap mesher does a great job of meshing across fin gaps and keeping the refinement local, but you are right in that the resulting element count may be a factor depending on the heat sink.

No hex support; closest you can get is a wedge using the extruded mesh option of the automatic option. This will require inserting a fluid volume between each of the fins in order to select it for the extrude option.

Another trick is to insert 3 fluid volumes in CAD between each of the fins. This forces the nodes across the gap. Then set the size of these volumes to a value that will stretch the aspect ratio of the tets. You will need to find the proper balance of aspect ratio and the mesh size that you find tolerable.

[phsieh2005]

Thanks a lot Mark!