Experimental investigation on the heat transfer performance of a PCM based pin fin heat sink with discrete heating

This paper reports the results of an experimental investigation of the heat transfer performance of a phase change material (PCM) based composite 72 pin fin heat sink subjected to individual heat loading of 4 discrete heaters of equal area. The investigation is then followed by multi objective optimization of the individual heat inputs, wherein the total power of the heaters is fixed. The PCM used is n-eicosane and the heat sink is made of aluminium. First, in house experiments are conducted for different combinations of power. The hotspots imposed by spatially non uniform heat flux are seen to have a considerable effect on the melting and solidification cycle and hence on the thermal performance of the heat sink. The diversity in the performance of heat sink motivates us to perform a multi objective optimization using Non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm (NSGA-II) to determine the optimum combination of the discrete power levels, that stretches the charging period and minimizes the discharging period of the heat sink simultaneously. The solutions obtained thus obtained are validated by conducting in house experiments. This study establishes the fact that discrete heating scenarios have to be considered in the future optimization of the heat sinks.