Numerical Modeling of Buoyancy Induced Convection in Finned Heat Sinks in Presence of Unheated and Heated Shrouds

Abstract

This paper investigates the effects of the presence of unheated and heated shrouds on the thermal performance of longitudinal finned heat sinks. A comprehensive numerical study was conducted to determine the impact of the shroud clearance from the tip of the fins and shroud heating. The first part of the study deals with the effects of an unheated shroud on finned heat sinks of different fin height, fin pitch and length in an attempt to cover a wide range of geometry. The numerical results reveal an optimum clearance for maximum heat transfer. For all heat sinks studied the unheated shroud improved the performance by as much as 15% until the shroud was very close when the performance decreased by as much as 10%. In the second part of the paper, the effects of heating of the shroud were considered. In these numerical runs, an isothermal boundary condition was imposed on the shroud. For the heating levels considered, it was found that heating of the shrouds can increase or lower the thermal performance of the heat sink depending on the heat sink geometry and shroud clearance. Finally, the numerical results also revealed a systematic dependence of the normalized Nusselt number on the Rayleigh number for a given heat sink geometry.