Numerical simulations of forced convection in novel cylindrical oblique-finned heat sink

In this paper, forced convection heat transfer of laminar flow through novel cylindrical discrete oblique fin heat sinks were simulated by Computational Fluid Dynamics method (CFD). The single channel structure was imported into FLUENT v.12.1 as a physical model to be simulated. The various aspect ratio and length ratios of discrete oblique fin arrays were investigated, and the optimized results were achieved. According to the results, the average Nusselt number for the copper heat sink could increase by as much as 73.5% and the average convective thermal resistance for the novel cylindrical micro-channel reduces by as much as 61.7% in comparison with the conventional micro-channel. The wall temperature and temperature gradient of cylindrical oblique fin heat sink are also much lower than those of conventional straight fin heat sink. It was concluded that the novel cylindrical microchannel heat sink is superior to conventional cylindrical microchannel heat sink. Lastly, the guidelines for optimizing cylindrical heat sink structure in different applications were also discussed.