{"id":356,"date":"2009-07-22T00:51:49","date_gmt":"2009-07-22T07:51:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.mentor.com\/robinbornoff\/?p=356"},"modified":"2026-03-27T08:54:58","modified_gmt":"2026-03-27T12:54:58","slug":"clogged-cooling-fins-a-cautionary-tale","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/simulating-the-real-world\/2009\/07\/22\/clogged-cooling-fins-a-cautionary-tale\/","title":{"rendered":"Clogged cooling fins, a cautionary tale"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Here&#8217;s an <a href=\"http:\/\/www.designnews.com\/blog\/Sherlock_Ohms\/18600-The_Adventure_of_the_Clogged_Fins.php?nid=4785&amp;rid=635812\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">interesting little article <\/a>about the consequences of clogged cooling (heatsink) fins.<\/p>\n<p>A heatsink (area extender) is fine if it&#8217;s working as intended. That is that its extended surface area is well ventilated such that the beneficial effects of the large surface area outweigh the fact that you&#8217;ve stuck a large solid obstruction on something that&#8217;s hot. If the fin surfaces suffer particulate build-up, especially to the extent whereby the air flow channels between the fins fill up, then all you&#8217;ve done is to do a better job of insulating the hot object you&#8217;re trying to cool. You&#8217;re now worse off than having no heatsinking fins at all.<\/p>\n<p>Check out the discussion thread on John Parry&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mentor.com\/products\/mechanical\/blog\/post\/mind-your-thermal-management-to-improve-reliability-91e617a8-f478-40b4-a991-d6b695662388\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">recent blog entry<\/a> which is relevant to this issue as well.<\/p>\n<p>22nd July Nottingham<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Here&#8217;s an interesting little article about the consequences of clogged cooling (heatsink) fins. A heatsink (area extender) is fine if&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":71715,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spanish_translation":"","french_translation":"","german_translation":"","italian_translation":"","polish_translation":"","japanese_translation":"","chinese_translation":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"industry":[],"product":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-356","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/simulating-the-real-world\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/356","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/simulating-the-real-world\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/simulating-the-real-world\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/simulating-the-real-world\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/71715"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/simulating-the-real-world\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=356"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/simulating-the-real-world\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/356\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6302,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/simulating-the-real-world\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/356\/revisions\/6302"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/simulating-the-real-world\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=356"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/simulating-the-real-world\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=356"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/simulating-the-real-world\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=356"},{"taxonomy":"industry","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/simulating-the-real-world\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/industry?post=356"},{"taxonomy":"product","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/simulating-the-real-world\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/product?post=356"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/simulating-the-real-world\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=356"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}