A pin fin array design problem is studied in the present work using the Levenberg-Marquardt method (LMM) and a commercial package CFD-ACE+ to estimate the optimal shape and perforation diameters of a perforated pin fin array module based on the desired temperature difference between the average temperature of the base plate and ambient temperature (Delta T). In addition to the perforation diameters, in this study, the height and diameter of the pin fin are also considered design variables under a fixed fin volume constraint, and it is determined that a significant improvement in the heat dissipation performance can be achieved. The results of the numerical design cases show that the height of the estimated pin fin becomes shorter, and the diameter of pin fin and perforation become larger than the original design for various cases considered in this work. At an inlet velocity equal to 5.2 m/s, the Nusselt numbers increase from 25.9% to 28.0%, and the average base plate temperatures decrease from 20.2% to 21.5% when compared with the original design of the perforated fin array. Finally, experimental verifications are performed on the fabricated pin fin modules. The measurement results illustrate that the experimental data are in good agreement with the numerical temperature distributions on those pin fin arrays. (C) 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.