Design & Analysis of Natural Convection Heat Transfer in a Rectangular Finned Heat Sink

In Natural convection heat transfer with the help of fin arrays, parameter are fin length to height ratio, spacing and orientation of geometry. In the longitudinally short fin array, where single chimney flow pattern is present hence heat transfer coefficient is high. In long rectangular fin arrays, air is stagnant at central zone hence it is not so much contributed in heat dissipation. In present study experimental setup is developed to studying the effect of natural convection over rectangular fin array. Fin spacing, height and heater input are the parameter study during experimentation. Lampblack coating is used to black fin surface. Flow patterns of various spacing’s are investigated using smoke flow visualization techniques. Most of the studies on natural convection have been considered constantly whereas velocity and temperature domain, do not change with time, transient one are used a lot. Governing equations are solved using a finite volume approach. The convective terms are discretized using the power-law scheme, whereas for diffusive terms the central difference is employed. Coupling between the velocity and pressure is made with SIMPLE algorithm. The resultant system of discretized linear algebraic equations is solved with an alternating direction implicit scheme. Then a configuration of rectangular fins is put in different ways on the surface and heat transfer of natural convection on these surfaces without sliding is studied and finally optimization is investigated.