NUMERICAL INVESTIGATIONS OF OPTIMAL DISTRIBUTION OF DISCRETE HEAT SOURCES UNDER NATURAL CONVECTION

The numerical investigations are conducted on the optimal arrangement of multiple protruding discrete heat sources mounted on a substrate board. The heat sources are made of aluminum and substrate board is made of Bakelite. This investigation carried out numerically by using the commercially available Ansys Fluent Software. The substrate board is oriented in vertical direction and natural convection heat transfer is studied. In addition, the effect of surface radiation of the heat sources is also investigated. The effect of domain spacing is also studied, and advised the domain spacing increasing is better for cooling rate increment of heat sources. The optimal configuration is determined by defining a non-dimensional geometric distance parameter (λ). To gain the coincidence in numerical results, the numerical results are cross-checked with the experimental results in the literature.