Computational analysis of perforation effect on the thermo-hydraulic performance of micro pin-fin heat sink

This paper investigates the hydrodynamic and thermal characteristics of perforated micro pin-fin (MPF) heat sink with different shapes and numbers of perforations under a low range (100–1000) of Reynolds number (Re) and constant base wall heat flux thermal boundary condition with air as the working fluid. The results show that the perforated MPFs provide higher Nusselt number (Nu) values and lower pressure drop levels (ΔP) than a solid MPF. These perforations have also shown higher fin effectiveness compared to solid square-shaped MPFs. Besides, the perforated MPFs show a superior performance (i.e., ≥45%) than solid MPFs. This study also infers that the circular-shaped perforation offers the best system performance (η) amidst the all different perforation shapes irrespective of the perforation number, followed by the elliptical and square-shaped perforation. For the circular-shaped perforation, performance improves by 30% when going from one to two perforations, and it improves up to 28% while moving from two to three perforations. This study reveals that there is a greater potential to employ circular perforation on a solid square MPF heat sink for better thermal management in electronic devices.