Effects of Al2O3-Water Nanofluid and Angular Orientation on Entropy Generation and Convective Heat Transfer of an Elliptical Micro-Pin-Fin Heat Sink

Abstract

This paper presents an investigation of the effect of nanofluid on the heat transfer performance in an elliptical micro-pin-fin heat sink including the influence of entropy generation and pin orientation. The orientation angle of pins is decreased with the number of pins in the array with a 90 degree angle for the first pin and a 0 degree angle for the last pin. To study the flow and heat transfer behaviors in a micro-pin-fin heat sink, steady Navier-Stokes and energy equations were discretized using a finite volume approach and were solved iteratively. Deionized (DI) water was used as a base coolant fluid while aluminum oxide (Al2O3) nanoparticles were used in the present study with mean diameters of 41.6 nm. The results showed that (1) changing the angular orientation of pins can cause significant enhancement in heat transfer, (2) a significant enhancement of heat transfer can be attained in the system due to the suspension of Al2O3 nanoparticles in the base fluid in comparison with pure water, (3) enhancement of heat transfer is intensified with increasing volume fraction of nanoparticles and Reynolds and Prandtl numbers, (4) increasing volume fraction of nanoparticles, which is responsible for higher heat transfer performance, leads to a higher pressure drop, (5) using nanofluids as coolant can cause lower heat transfer entropy generation due to their high thermal properties, and (6) with increasing volume fraction and Reynolds and Prandtl numbers, overall entropy generation rate decreases.