Natural convection heat transfer effects with micro finned structures

Abstract

Micro-scale natural convection plays an important role in heat removal from microelectronic components and Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems (MEMS) devices. Natural convection of macrofin arrays has been extensively studied by many researchers over the past several decades; however analysis of free convection around microfin arrays is less well researched. The objective of this work was to experimentally investigate the effects of micro fin height and spacing for a horizontally mounted heat sink on heat transfer coefficient when operating under steady state natural convection conditions. An array of micro finned copper heat sinks was fabricated using micro-electro discharge wire machining (μ-EDWM) with fin height ranging from 0.25 to 1.0mm and fin spacing from 0.5 to 1.0mm respectively. Results showed that values of the convective heat transfer coefficient increased with increased fin spacing and decreased as fin height increased.