Comparison of Air-Cooling on Metal Heat Sinks Using Numerical Modelling

- In this paper, air-cooling models are investigated numerically on a new design of metal fin heat sinks based on the motor of the motorcycle using the Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) package ANSYS Fluent. The standard k - ε turbulence model was used in the numerical simulation. The domain was a rectangular geometry, and the metal fins created in the numerical model had three types: square pin, circle short pin, and circle long pin. These metal fin models were heated by a heat source at a power of 150-200 W based on the working range of the motorcycle’s motor. Also, the air velocity for cooling was in the range of 40-60 km/h based on the motorcycle’s speed. The temperature contours of the three models were used to compare the heat dissipation. The results showed that the thermal resistance did not change significantly when the heat source was changed. Notably, the circle long pin had the best effectiveness in dissipating heat compared to the others. The results from this research were important information that will help design and develop the heat sinks of the motor in the future.