Experimental and numerical investigations of heat transfer and flow characteristics of cross-cut heat sinks

This study aims to experimentally and numerically investigate the heat transfer and flow characteristics of plate-fin and cross-cut heat sinks. The accuracy of the measured data is verified by comparing them with the exiting correlations. In the case of the cross-cut heat sink, the effects of cross-cut lengths (Lc) and number of cross-cuts (Nc) are presented. The experimental results show that the cross-cut heat sink with Lc = 1.5 mm gives the lowest thermal resistance. In the case of a numerical study, the numerical results are validated by comparing them with the measured data. The comparison results show that the present model gives reasonable agreement with the measured data. Consequently, the present model is used to find the optimal length and number of cross-cuts. From the numerical results, it is found that the thermal resistance of a cross-cut heat sink with Lc = 1.5 mm and Nc = 6 is 16.2% lower than that of a plate-fin heat sink at the same pumping power.