Heat Transfer Characteristics of Square Micro Pin Fins under Natural Convection

Abstract

In order to comply with the recent demand for downsizing of the electric equipment, the minia- turization and the improvement in heat transfer performance of a heat sink under natural air-cooling are increasingly required. This paper describes the experimental and numerical investigations of heat sinks with miniature/micro pins and the effect of the pin size, pin height and the number of pins on heat transfer characteristics of heat sinks. Five types of basic heat sink models are investigated in this study. The whole heat transfer area of heat sinks having the different pin size, pin height and the number of pins respectively is kept constant. From a series of experiments and numerical analyses, it has been clarified that the heat sink temperature rises with increase in the number of pins. That is, the heat sink with miniaturized fine pins showed almost no effect on the heat transfer enhancement. This is because of the choking phenomenon occurred in the air space among the pin fins. Reflecting these results, it is confirmed that the heat transfer coefficient reduces with miniaturization of pins. Concerning the effects of the heat transfer area on the heat sink performance, almost the same tendency has been observed in other three series of large surface area, that is, higher pin height. Furthermore as a result of studying non-dimensional convection heat transfer performance, it was found that the relation between the Nusselt number (Nu) and the Rayleight number (Ra) is given by Nu = 0.16 Ra0.52.