HEAT TRANSFER ANALYSIS ON BASE OF HEAT SINK WITH UNIFORM HEAT GENERATION

The present work describes the important results of problem of combined conduction, convection and radiation from a rectangular heat sink base subjected to uniform internal heat generation in its base. The governing equations for temperature distribution within the base are obtained by a relevant energy balance between rate of heat generation, heat conducted, convected and radiated. The derived non-linear partial differential equations are converted into algebraic form using finite difference method with 2nd order accuracy. The obtained algebraic equations have been solved simultaneously by Gauss-siedel iterative method with stringent convergence criteria and a C code has been written for above purpose. The computational domain has been discretized uniformly in all directions. A grid convergence test has been carried out to optimize the size of element. A complete parametric study has been carried out to study the effect of material of heat sink, regime of convection and role of radiation on local temperature distribution and maximum heat sink base temperature. It has been observed that material with high conductivity decreases the local temperature gradient and thus the maximum temperature. The regime of convection has a great influence on maximum temperature of heat sink with 15K of drop in Tmax. for a change in flow regime from free convection to forced convection. A special study on exclusive role of convection on maximum temperature reveals that one should not ignore the role forced convection in heat dissipation.