Enhanced heat transfer in corrugated plate fin heat sink

Abstract To design a compact heat sink, a simplified geometry, enhanced heat dissipation, and the minimum pressure drop should be taken into consideration. With this objective, an experimental investigation has been conducted with the corrugated plate-fin heat sink by varying the relative radius of corrugation and relative corrugation pitch in the range of 0.16–0.31, and 0.06–0.16, respectively, for the Reynolds number range of 6000–14,000. Experiments were conducted on a corrugated plate-fin heat sink using an open-loop experimental system comprising a test section of a rectangular channel measuring 2300 mm long, 180 mm wide, and 80 mm high. The corrugated fin creates higher disturbances caused by multiple separations and reattachments in the flow and thereby yielding a higher localized heat transfer coefficient and enhanced heat transfer from the system. The maximum fin performance is found to be 5.87 for the corrugated plate-fin heat sink corresponding to the relative radius of corrugation and relative corrugation pitch of 0.16 and 0.125, respectively.