Thermal analysis and experimental validation of pin fins with peripheral protrusions

Abstract

With the growing pace of technological advancement, electronic and thermal components play a crucial role in every domain. These components are however challenged by continuous heat generation which is required to be dissipated for their efficient working. This gives rise to the need of heat dissipating measures and hence, an extensive research is being done in this field. Extended surfaces, known as fins provide an efficient way of cooling components and their utility ranges from medical, power, thermal to microelectronic components. The present work is aimed to augment the thermal performance of pin fins by the introduction of protrusions on the surface of the fin along the length, in two rows, each row having three protrusions. Different geometrical configurations viz. cuboidal, cylindrical, triangular and hemispherical for the protrusion were analysed using Computational Fluid Dynamics. From the results, it is evident that the maximum increase of approximately 7% of the total heat flux is obtained from the surface of the fin with cylindrical protrusions and considerable increase in the total heat flux is obtained in other configurations. It was also concluded that cuboidal and cylindrical protrusions have lowest temperature profiles indicating better heat transfer behaviour. The temperature profile for the fin without protrusions was experimentally validated. The results of the fins with protrusions are in agreement with the existing research papers.