Thermal Performance Improvement of a Fin-Arrayed Horizontal Heat Sink Corroborating Optimal Orientation Angle

Abstract

The present study deals with a simple but effective technique for improving the forced convective cooling of a horizontal heat sink with vertical pin-fin-array.The pin fins are embedded in a staggered arrangement on thebase-plate of the horizontal sink. Air, while passing through the fin-array, convects the heat conducted from the solid base-plate to the fins’ surface. The objective of this paper is to examine the role of the orientation angle (  ) on the performance of the heat sink.  is varied from 0 to 360by rotating the horizontal sink about a vertical axis passing through the center of the sink. A detailed CFD (computational fluid dynamics) study is coordinated over a wide range of inflow Reynolds number ( Re) to explore the possibility for obtaining an optimum orientation angle (  ) for which Nusselt number ( Nu ) would be the maximum. Results indicate that optimum angle hovers around   120regardless of the values of Re.