A parametric numerical study in cylindrical oblique fin minichannel

Abstract

A novel cylindrical oblique fin minichannel heat sink was proposed to cool cylindrical heat sources using forced convection scheme. In this paper, parametric numerical study was employed to understand the importance of the various dimensions of the oblique fin heat sinks and their heat transfer performance and pressure drop. Three dimensional conjugated heat transfer simulations were carried out using Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) method based on laminar flow to determine its performance in the oblique fin heat sink. 214 parametric studies were performed by varying the oblique angle from 20° to 45°, secondary channel gap from 1mm to 5mm and Reynolds number from 200 to 900. Their thermal performance was compared for a constant heat flux of 1 W/cm2. The results show that the flow is main channel directed in shorter secondary channel structure while the flow becomes secondary channel directed in longer secondary channel structure. Secondary flow becomes more effective in heat transfer when increasing the secondary channel gap. When the oblique angle increases, more flow will be diverted into secondary channel and improve flow mixing to enhance the heat transfer. The best configuration in this paper was suggested based on the numerical data point. The overall performance can be improved up to 110% at Reynolds number of 900 compared with conventional straight fin minichannel. Therefore, this is the attractive candidate for future cylindrical heat sinks. Copyright © 2013 by ASME.