Numerical study on the heat transfer of micro elliptic pin fins in a rectangular minichannel

This paper numerically studies the effects of design parameters on the thermal performance and flow resistance under the forced convection of a rectangular minichannel with short elliptical pin fins. The investigations show that fins with a higher fin height and streamwise-oriented major axis direction yield better heat transfer performance, and the volume fraction without fins should be near 0.92. Also, compared to solid metal materials, porous metal is a better choice for fins, which reduces pressure drop significantly with little thermal consumption at proper pore density.