Numerical Investigation of Cylindrical Pin Fin Heat Sink in Natural Convection

Heat produced by electronic devices and circuitry must be dissipated to improve reliability and prevent premature failure. Heat sinks are the most common thermal management hardware used in electronics. They improve the thermal control of electronic components, assemblies, and modules by enhancing their surface area through the use of pin fins. The objective of this paper is to present an Optimal Heat Sink for efficient cooling of electronic devices. This paper aims at understanding of flow and heat transfer from horizontal base cylindrical pin-fin heat sinks having inline configuration with exposed edges in free convection of air. The study consists of different arrangement of fin height keeping other parameters such as fin base area; fin density and diameter are kept constant which gives maximum heat transfer so that which would obtain an optimal fin type. Here basically three types of fin arrangement are studied numerically, modeled using the ANSYS 14.0 software. A relative contribution of outer and inner fin rows in the sink is assessed from flow and static temperature contour together with the effect of fin location in the array on the heat-transfer rate from an individual fin.