Experimental and Numerical Investigation of the Effect of Interrupted, Inclined, and Staggered Rectangular‐Fin Arrays on Heat Sink Performance

ABSTRACT The present work focuses on the influence of continuous and interrupted fins on laminar natural convection above a heat sink with different fins' arrangements. The hydraulic and thermal performances of a three‐dimensional model of the heat sink were simulated using ANSYS Fluent software based on the finite volume method. The dimensions of the heat sink were 305 mm in length and 100 mm in width, while the fin height was 17 mm, and the fin spacing was 9.5 mm. Various power supplies were applied to the heat sink (20, 40, 60, 80, 100, and 120 W) to investigate the effect of different ranges of heat sink performance. Different fins' configurations were tested, including straight‐fin, interrupted with different angle inclinations (30°, 45°, and 60°), and staggered arrangements with an angle of inclination of 60°. The results showed that the increase in the interruption length leads to an increase in the heat transfer (HT) rate. Moreover, five interruptions with a length of 30 mm lead to an HT rate of 22.3% as compared with continuous fins. The inclination of 60° gave the optimum HT rate. Furthermore, there will be a weight reduction of 47% for the optimum HT rate. An empirical correlation was developed to relate the Nusselt number to the Rayleigh number and inclination angle for interrupted rectangular fins at angles of 90°, 60°, and 45°, providing a robust predictive tool for assessing thermal performance. Furthermore, the current numerical and experimental results demonstrated an 89.5% concordance in the average temperature difference, with a divergence of less than 4.68% from existing literature.