Experimental Investigation of Natural Convective Heat Transfer Around Micro-fin Arrays

In recent years development of high speed computers leads to production of IC's with high performance which leads to more heat generation. With the available space and power, micro-scale natural convection plays a significant role in heat removal mechanism. Researchers worldwide extensively reported the natural convection in macro fin array and analyses on natural convection in micro fin array is not much well researched. This study experimentally investigates the effects of micro fin height and spacing on heat transfer coefficient of heat sink when operating under steady state natural convection conditions. The three different materials such as copper, aluminium and stainless steel were considered and micro fin array are fabricated on it through Wire Electro Discharge Machining (WEDM).Micro fin array with height of 0.25 mm and fin spacing ranging from 1.25 to 2.25 mm are fabricated on the test pieces. The study reveals that micro fin made up of copper shows the highest value for convective heat transfer co-efficient of 11.3 Wm(-2)K(-1) for fin height of 0.25 mm and fin spacing of 2.25 mm.