Thermal performance of a corrugated heat dissipation fin design: A natural convection numerical analysis

Abstract

This work is an extensive numerical study of the heat dissipation and cooling of a heat- generating vertical base using corrugated fins. The overall objective is to improve the heat transfer performance for passive heat sink applications. Three-dimensional numerical simulations were performed using FLUENT; the mass conservation equation, Navier–Stokes equations and the energy equation were solved using a finite volume approach. Various geometrical configurations were considered, where the aspect ratio of the thickness (AR) for corrugated fins was adopted as the key variable for improving heat transfer performance. The applied heat flux is in the range 811.55 to 4674.56W/m2. The results for the corrugated fins were compared to those for the conventional plate fins in terms of fluid flow, temperatures, heat transfer coefficients and weights. The results show that the proposed finned heat sinks can improve the heat transfer coefficient by up to 12.52% compared to the reference-finned plate. Additionally, the curved fin design can reduce the unit weight and thus the material use by up to 59% compared with the conventional fin design. Finally, the overall thermal efficiency of the proposed fins is around98%. The proposed design presents a suitable solution for industrial applications where the mass of the heat sink substrate is significant.