Numerical Study of Heat Sink Performance for Varying Number of Fins for Constant Fin Volume and Constant Fin Thickness

Heat sinks are devices which absorb and dissipate excess unwanted heat. They help in maintaining temperature of a component within safe limits. The design of heat sink is critical as it effects the performance of the heat sink. The optimum design will dissipate the maximum amount of heat and at the same time will be compact and cheap to produce. This paper aims at studying the performance of heat sink for varying number of fins in two cases, viz. first by varying number of fins keeping fin volume constant and second by varying number of fins keeping fin thickness constant. For this study we have considered the case of a free convection heat sink for an electronic chip with heat load of 10 Watt. The number of fins is varied for each case keeping all other parameters constant and the maximum temperature of the chip is plotted.