THERMAL ANALYSIS OF RECTANGULAR FINS WITH DIFFERENT SHAPES OF LATERAL PERFORATIONS BY FORCED CONVECTION

Heat dissipation is an important problem for compactness and weight of equipment. Heat dissipaters are chosen not only for their thermal performance but also for other design parameters such as weight, cost, and reliability depending on applications. The present paper reports on thermal analysis of rectangular fin arrays with different shapes of perforations for forced convection. The cross-sectional area of a rectangular duct was 200 mm x 80 mm. The data used for the performance analysis were obtained experimentally for aluminum at 200-W heat input with the Reynolds number varying in the range 2.1 x 10(4)-8.7 x 10(4). The simulation was carried out using the ANSYS 12.0 and fluid flow (CFX) workbench. The CFD simulation results are validated with experimental results and good agreement was observed. The results show that fins with circular and hexagonal perforations have remarkable heat transfer enhancement in addition to reduction in weight by comparison with solid fins, which amounts to almost 18%.