Numerical Simulation of the Implementation of Cooling Micro-fins in a 6061 Alloy

An experimental and numerical study was carried out to analyze the effect of cooling micro-fins on the heat transfer coefficient in 6061 aluminum sheets subjected to a constant heat flow in a Joule heating system. For the numerical simulation, two User Defined Functions were implemented in a commercial program to solve the constitutive transport equations with the control volume method. The first UDF was used to establish the heat generation term by electric current; the second UDF was employed to calculate the heat transfer coefficient by convection based on the Grashof and Prandtl dimensionless numbers. The experimental results showed that at a constant heat flow, both sheets reach different maximum temperatures, 400 °C for the sheet without micro fins and 320 °C with micro fins. The coefficient of heat transfer was increased by an average of 25% using micro fins on aluminum sheet 6061.