Conjugate Heat Transfer Study of Innovative Pin-Fin Cooling Configuration

Abstract

The Paper involves experimental and numerical heat transfer analyses of four pin-fin cooling configurations in a rectangular channel. Two design concepts were studied with two separate pin-fin (cylindrical and triangular) geometries. The first design includes a single-wall pin-fin configuration where the coolant flows through an array of full-length cylindrical (PF) and triangular pin fins (TF). The second configuration involves a double-wall pin-fin–jet configuration where the coolant jet impinges on the target wall, then flows through the array of partial-length cylindrical pin fins with jets (PFC) and partial-length triangular pin fins with jets (TFC). IR thermography was used to measure the steady state wall temperature of the target surface to estimate the overall cooling effectiveness $\varphi$ . A transient heat transfer experiment was conducted to evaluate the internal heat transfer coefficient from the transient wall temperature. It is found that the double-wall pin-fin–jet (PFC and TFC) configurations show higher cooling effectiveness compared to the single-wall pin-fin (PF and TF) designs and the triangular pin fin (TF and TFC) showed a higher heat transfer augmentation compared to the cylindrical pin fin (PF and PFC) design. Numerical study later confirmed that the triangular pin fin creates a pair of streamwise vortices that augments the local heat transfer. The presence of the pin fin in the double-wall configuration prevents the development of a strong crossflow that negatively affects the heat transfer of the impinging jet. In addition, the triangular pin fin not only prevents the strong crossflow but redirects the coolant in the lateral direction that eventually contributes to the formation of a counterrotating vortex pair in the streamwise direction and thus augments local heat transfer and improves overall cooling effectiveness. Pressure drop measurement showed that the full-length triangular pin fin has a higher-pressure loss but the partial-length pin fin can lower the pressure loss considerably without compromising additional cooling performance.