A Novel Method to Reduce the Thermal Contact Resistance
G.V Krishna Reddy1, N.Chikkanna2, B.Uma Maheswar Gowd3

1Mr. G.V.Krishna Reddy, Department of Mechanical Engineering of Govt Polytechnic, Bangalore (Karnataka), India.
2Dr. N. Chikkanna, Government Engineering College, Hoovina hadagali, Bellary (Karnataka), India.
3Dr. B. Uma maheshwar Gowd,  Rector (I/c) Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University, Anantapur (Andhra Pradesh), India.

Manuscript received on 18 June 2012 | Revised Manuscript received on 25 June 2012 | Manuscript published on 30 June 2012 | PP: 11-15 | Volume-1 Issue-2, June 2012 | Retrieval Number: B0161041212/2012©BEIESP
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© The Authors. Blue Eyes Intelligence Engineering and Sciences Publication (BEIESP). This is an open access article under the CC-BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/)

Abstract: In this research work, a novel method is designed to reduce the thermal contact resistance at the interface between the heat sink and the computer processor. One of the major problems in using high conducting materials or greases as the thermal interfacial materials is, the circuitry inside the processor which is lying near the interfacial wall will get shorted and the some of the transistor may not function as intended thus leading to the failure of the processors. Hence low electrically conducting interfacial materials are preferred. Usually for most of the materials, the electrical and thermal conductivities are proportional to each other. However, the drawback in using the low electrically or thermally conducting materials is, it cannot remove the heat generated from the high speed processors fast enough thus increasing the temperature of the processor. With the raise in temperature, the performance of the processor drops down. To avoid this, low conducting grease is applied to the processor first in the order of 5 microns and highly conducting grease is applied between the processor (over the low conducting grease) and the heat sink. The performance of the two layers of the grease is measured in this work and compared with a single layer of the grease.
Keyword: Thermal Interfacial Materials, Grease, Aluminum Foils, Thermal Contact Resistance, Thermal Conductivity, Electronics Cooling.

Scope of the Article: Thermal Engineering