Return to search

Numerical Study Of Heat Transfer From Pin Fin Heat Sink Using Steady And Pulsated Impinging Jets

The work reported in this thesis is an attempt to enhance heat transfer in electronic devices with the use of impinging air jets on pin-finned heat sinks. The cooling per-formance of electronic devices has attracted increased attention owing to the demand of compact size, higher power densities and demands on system performance and re-liability. Although the technology of cooling has greatly advanced, the main cause of malfunction of the electronic devices remains overheating. The problem arises due to restriction of space and also due to high heat dissipation rates, which have increased
from a fraction of a W/cm2to 100s of W /cm2. Although several researchers have at-tempted to address this at the design stage, unfortunately the speed of invention of
cooling mechanism has not kept pace with the ever-increasing requirement of heat re-
moval from electronic chips. As a result, efficient cooling of electronic chip remains a
challenge in thermal engineering.

Heat transfer can be enhanced by several ways like air cooling, liquid cooling, phase
change cooling etc. However, in certain applications due to limitations on cost and
weight, eg. air borne application, air cooling is imperative. The heat transfer can be increased by two ways. First, increasing the heat transfer coefficient (forced convec-
tion), and second, increasing the surface area of heat transfer (finned heat sinks). From previous literature it was established that for a given volumetric air flow rate, jet im-pingement is the best option for enhancing heat transfer coefficient and for a given volume of heat sink material pin-finned heat sinks are the best option because of their high surface area to volume ratio. There are certain applications where very high jet velocities cannot be used because of limitations of noise and presence of delicate components. This process can further be improved by pulsating the jet. A steady jet often stabilizes the boundary layer on the surface to be cooled. Enhancement in the convective heat transfer can be achieved if the boundary layer is broken. Disruptions in the boundary layer can be caused by pulsating the impinging jet, i.e., making the jet unsteady. Besides, the pulsations lead to chaotic mixing, i.e., the fluid particles no more follow well defined streamlines but move unpredictably through the stagnation region. Thus the flow mimics turbulence at low Reynolds number. The pulsation should be done in such a way that the boundary layer can be disturbed periodically and yet adequate coolant is made available. So, that there is not much variation in temperature during one pulse cycle. From previous literature it was found that square waveform is most effective in enhancing heat transfer. In the present study the combined effect of pin-finned heat sink and impinging slot jet, both steady and unsteady, has been investigated for both laminar and turbulent flows. The effect of fin height and height of impingement has been studied. The jets have been pulsated in square waveform to study the effect of frequency and duty cycle. This thesis attempts to increase our understanding of the slot jet impingement on pin-finned heat sinks through numerical investigations. A systematic study is carried out using the finite-volume code FLUENT (Version 6.2) to solve the thermal and flow fields. The standard k-ε model for turbulence equations and two layer zonal model in wall function are used in the problem Pressure-velocity coupling is handled using the SIMPLE algorithm with a staggered grid.

The parameters that affect the heat transfer coefficient are: height of the fins, total
height of impingement, jet exit Reynolds number, frequency of the jet and duty cycle
(percentage time the jet is flowing during one complete cycle of the pulse).

From the studies carried out it was found that:
a) beyond a certain height of the fin the rate of enhancement of heat transfer becomes
very low with further increase in height,
b) the heat transfer enhancement is much more sensitive to any changes at low Reynolds
number than compared to high Reynolds number,
c) for a given total height of impingement the use of fins and pulsated jet, increases
the effective heat transfer coefficient by almost 200% for the same average Reynolds
number,
d) for all the cases it was observed that the optimum frequency of impingement is around 50 − 100 Hz and optimum duty cycle around 25-33.33%,
e) in the case of turbulent jets the enhancement in heat transfer due to pulsations is very less compared to the enhancement in case of laminar jets.

  1. http://hdl.handle.net/2005/351
Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:IISc/oai:etd.ncsi.iisc.ernet.in:2005/351
Date04 1900
CreatorsSanyal, Anuradha
ContributorsDutta, Pradip, Srinivasan, K
Source SetsIndia Institute of Science
Languageen_US
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeThesis
RightsI grant Indian Institute of Science the right to archive and to make available my thesis or dissertation in whole or in part in all forms of media, now hereafter known. I retain all proprietary rights, such as patent rights. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis or dissertation.

Page generated in 0.0029 seconds