DESIGN OF HORIZONTAL FIN ARRAY FOR RADIATIVE HEAT TRANSFER

This paper presents the analytical and simulation results of optimizing the radiative heat transfer performance of horizontal rectangular fin array heat sink. The fin thickness and inter-fin spacing need to be properly designed to eliminate surface area changes accompanying the creation of fin structures. Analytical expression for this change in area is developed in this work and used in identifying the optimum number of fins and their corresponding inter-fin spacing for a given rectangular space of a radiative heat sink. COMSOL Multiphysics software is used to simulate the structures considered in the above analysis. The performances of the simulated structures as radiative heat sinks are compared with the ones suggested by the developed empirical equation. The results from the two methods agreed with each successfully in the sense that the structures with large numerical radiative power from the simulations are found to also be the optimum structures suggested by the analytical formula derived in this work.