Analysis of natural convection heat transfer from vertical and inclined plate fin heat sinks

Abstract

In this paper, numerical study on steady-state natural convection of radiators with parallel arrangement of rectangular cross-section fins on vertical trusses is numerically investigated. Aluminum heat sinks with two different liquid layouts, referred as the slice layout and brick layout, respectively, are modeled and compared. The natural convection and temperature characteristics of the back side of the heat sink with multiple heaters heated from the front were obtained by finite volume computational fluid dynamics simulation. The verified model is used for downward tilting by changing the direction of gravity acceleration. It was observed that, for the slice layout structure, within an inclination from the vertical, the inclination does not reduce the convection heat transfer rate, while a significant increase was achieved in the brick layout case, mainly caused by the flow separation inside the fin channels of the heat sink. It is further shown that the brick layout with inclined plate fins is a good candidate as a natural convection heat transfer.