The objective of this thesis is to predict numerically the optimal spacing between parallel heat generating boards. The isothermal boards are stacked in a fixed volume of electronic package enclosed by insulated lateral walls, and they are cooled by laminar forced convection of air with prescribed pressure drop. Fixed pressure drop assumption is an acceptable model for installations in which several parallel boards in electronic equipment receive the coolant from the same source such as a fan. In the numerical algorithm, the equations that govern the process of forced convection for constant property incompressible flow through one rectangular channel are solved. Numerical results of the flow and temperature field in each rectangular channel yield the optimal board-to-board spacing by which maximum heat dissipation rate from the package to the air is achieved. After the results of the optimization procedure are given, the correlations for the determination of the maximum heat transfer rate from the package and optimal spacing between boards are, respectively, derived in terms of prescribed pressure difference, board length, and density and kinematic viscosity of air. In conclusion, the obtained correlations are compared and assessed with the available two-dimensional studies in literature for infinite parallel plates. Furthermore, existing two-dimensional results are extended to a more generalized three-dimensional case at the end of the thesis.

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