EXPERIMENTAL AND NUMERICAL INVESTIGATION OF THE EFFECT OF ALUMINUM POROUS FINS ON HEAT TRANSFER

Thermal management of electronic devices is an essential issue as it affects the function and longevity of the components. In this paper, aluminum porous fins mounted on a surface in a rectangular channel for three bypass ratios arrayed in inline and staggered arrangements, three thicknesses, as well as pore densities were investigated experimentally and numerically. The heat removal and pressure drop characteristics of the aluminum foam-filled horizontal channel were examined for different Reynolds numbers. The numerical study was developed using the COMSOL Multiphysics software and the outcomes of the developed simulation model were validated using the experimental results. As a result of the study, it was observed that the insertion of aluminum foams inside the channel increased the Nusselt number, and that the staggered configuration improved heat transfer approximately 6.49 times compared to an empty channel. Similarly, the pressure drop was increased by 11.2 times. The staggered fin configuration provided higher heat transfer performance compared to the inline configuration. For fin profiles with the constant fin volume, as the fin thickness increased, the pressure drop also increased, along with the Nusselt number. However, as the thickness increased, the increase in Delta P was greater than the increase in Nu, leading to the lowest thermal efficiency factor eta value for the fin with a thickness of ts = 90 mm. In the studied Reynolds range, with the increase in Re, both Nu and Delta P vary proportionally with the PPI ratio of the aluminum foam fins.

Journal

HEAT TRANSFER RESEARCH

Year

2025

Volume

56

Issue

9

Pages

75-92

ISSN

1064-2285

eISSN

2162-6561

DOI

10.1615/HeatTransRes.2025057266

WoS UID

WOS:001464120100002