Effects of Perforations on the Thermal and Fluid Dynamic Performance of a Heat Exchanger

Efficient and optimized heat exchanger design is necessary because of the continuous increase of power consumption rate of electronic equipment and the simultaneous interest in reducing the mass and dimensions of the cooling equipment. This paper presents a numerical study of laminar forced convective heat transfer from an array of solid and different types of perforated fins attached to a rectangular-horizontal base plate. Fluid-flow and heat-transfer characteristics are presented for Reynolds numbers from 100 to 350 based on the fin thickness; Pr and tl number is taken as Pr = 0.71. Finite element approach with an unstructured nonuniform grid system is employed for solving the fluid-flow and heat-transfer equations. The predicted results obtained from the computational fluid dynamics simulations are verified by the previously published data, and the obtained results are in reasonable agreement. This numerical study determines the effects of various types of perforations on the pressure drop and heat-transfer performance of heat exchangers. For each type of perforation, fin effectiveness and performances are determined and compared with those of a solid fin. Results show that perforated fins have better thermal performance than solid fins.