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Abstract

The thermo-hydraulic performance of heat sinks is strongly influenced by pin-fin geometry; however, systematic evaluation of twisted NACA 0021 airfoil pin fins as an alternative to conventional cylindrical configurations remains limited. The current study involved numerical investigations using ANSYS Fluent 2023 in analyzing a heat sink with twisted NACA 0021 airfoil pin fins subjected to turbulent forced convection. The traditional design with cylindrical pin-fin heat sinks was used as the baseline geometry, and varying degrees of twist ranging from 0° to 60° were studied over a range of inlet velocity from 6.5 to 12 m/s (Re = 3.8 × 103 - 7.0 × 103) The results revealed that the rise in the degree of twist enhanced flow mixing and convective heat transfer. Specifically, when compared with the cylindrical geometry at a velocity of 12 m/s, the mean Nusselt number increased to 229.5 from 167.3 with 60° twist, representing an increase of about 37%, while there was a decrease of almost 19% in mean wall temperature. Though there was an increase in the pressure drop for the twisted airfoils compared to the untwisted counterparts, there remained a decrease of 41% pressure drop relative to the cylindrical configuration. The hydrothermal performance parameter increased steadily with twist angle, reaching its highest value of 1.64, suggesting that the thermal benefit outweighs the hydraulic detriment. It is evident that twisting NACA 0021 airfoil pin fins offers an efficient passive technique for enhancing heat sink performance.

DOI

10.53293/2788-6867.1181

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