Heat sinks with fluted and wavy fins in natural and low-velocity forced convection

Novel heat sinks with fluted and wavy fin configurations are designed and fabricated together with conventional longitudinal-plate and pin fin heat sinks. The experimental apparatus, consisting of the guard heater assembly, isolation chamber, wind tunnel and data acquisition instrumentation, is described. The thermal performance of the novel and conventional heat sinks is measured and compared for the horizontal and vertical base plate orientations under natural and low-velocity forced convection conditions. Results, presented as the Nusselt number against the Rayleigh or Reynolds numbers, reveal that the pin fin heat sink outperforms the other heat sinks. The novel heat sink designs do not yield significantly better thermal performance than the conventional heat sinks.