Heat spreading in a thin longitudinal fin

In view of the trend towards higher power densities in ever shrinking geometries, understanding heat spreading fundamentals is gaining importance. In this paper heat spreading in thin longitudinal geometries is considered. This geometry is of practical interest in one-dimensional Cartesian geometries. A characteristic length is derived and it is shown that this has physical significance for the distance that heat spreads, and for the total amount of heat cooled away. Furthermore, it is investigated when “thin” is a viable assumption. The use of the characteristic length is illustrated for the case of a line source cooling to a plate and for the case of the fins of a plate heatsink. The results are compared to numerical simulations. The work is an extension of the authors' earlier work on heat spreading in infinite longitudinal geometries and heat spreading in infinite and finite circular geometries.