Effect of Interruption on a Shrouded Fin Heat Sink: A Numerical Study

A three-dimensional computational study of a novel heat sink design under natural convection heat transfer is performed. All fins are mounted on a vertical base plate of dimension 80 × 50 × 5 mm. In this study, a novel interrupted secondary branched fin heat sink is compared with continuous rectangular plate fin heat sink, interrupted continuous rectangular plate heat sink and secondary branched heat sink. The effect of symmetric number interruptions on secondary branched fin on the overall performance of the heat sink (i.e., heat transfer, Nusselt Number, effectiveness) has been investigated. The temperature difference between the ambient air and base plate varied between 10 and 60 °C. The Rayleigh number considered for this simulation is 1.1 × 105 ≤ Ra ≤ 6.1 × 105. Simulation results show that overall heat transfer rate increases with increase in number of interruption on the secondary branched fin. The maximum heat dissipation occurs on two interruptions is higher than the conventional heat sink (i.e., continuous rectangular plate heat sink), which is 7.62% more compared to the conventional design.