ANALYSIS OF HEAT TRANSFER RATE OF WAVY FINS ON A HORIZONTAL BASE

Abstract

Fins are extended surfaces which help to increase the heat transfer rate from surfaces and help to reduce the temperature of the surface by increasing surface area. The application of the use of fins as heat sinks in device requires an additional space, which in most heat producing devices are not usually available. The aim of this study is to minimize the problem of increased space and weight usually associated with the use of finned heat sink, as well as achieving increased heat transfer rate in many electronic and mechanical devices, during system thermal design. As a means of tackling the problem of additional space and increased weight associated with the use of extended surfaces (fins), a numerical study to solve the 3-D forms of the continuity, momentum and energy equations for several configurations of a fin array was carried out based on Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) using Solidworks 2018 commercial version, to analyze the convection heat transfer in wavy fin protruding from a horizontal base. The critical parameters of the configurations examined are fin spacing, wavelength, and height. The fin thickness and length are fixed. The fin spacing ranged from (10.85mm to 28mm), fin wavelength (7mm to 10mm), fin height (15mm to 35mm). The fin thickness (3mm) and fin length (95mm) were fixed. Based on the simulation results, it was discovered that wavy fins have effective convective heat transfer rate and is based on the fin height, wavelength and fin spacing. And comparatively the heat transfer rate of any given wavy fin array and it stretched length is about 9% less.It was also observed that the convective heat transfer rate for the wavy fin array is greater than that of the straight rectangular fin array of the same fin height and fin spacing by about 28% at higher base-to-ambient temperature difference.When the wavy fin effective or elliptical length was stretched into a straight fin, and their heat transfer rate compared, the stretched fin occupied additional height of about 43%. This implies that the use of a wavy fin array instead of the rectangular straight fin array eliminates fin additional space to the system design by 43%. Therefore, wavy fins could be recommended for heat sink design where space, weight and size are of ultimate consideration.