Visual investigation on the heat dissipation process of a heat sink by using digital holographic interferometry

We present a method for visually and quantitatively investigating the heat dissipation process of plate-fin heat sinks by using digital holographic interferometry. A series of phase change maps reflecting the temperature distribution and variation trend of the air field surrounding heat sink during the heat dissipation process are numerically reconstructed based on double-exposure holographic interferometry. According to the phase unwrapping algorithm and the derived relationship between temperature and phase change of the detection beam, the full-field temperature distributions are quantitatively obtained with a reasonably high measurement accuracy. And then the impact of heat sink's channel width on the heat dissipation performance in the case of natural convection is analyzed. In addition, a comparison between simulation and experiment results is given to verify the reliability of this method. The experiment results certify the feasibility and validity of the presented method in full-field, dynamical, and quantitative measurement of the air field temperature distribution, which provides a basis for analyzing the heat dissipation performance of plate-fin heat sinks.