Performance of Hybrid Fin Heat Sinks for Thermal Control of Light Emitting Diode Lighting Modules

In this paper we introduce a hybrid fin heat sink (HFH) proposed for the thermal control of light emitting diode (LED) lighting modules. The HFH consists of the array of hybrid fins which are hollow pin fins having internal channels and integrated with plate fins. The thermal performance of the HFH under either natural or forced convection condition is both experimentally and numerically investigated, and then its performance is compared with that of a pin fin heat sink (PFH). The observed maximum discrepancies of the numerical prediction to the measurement for the HFH are 7% and 6% for natural and forced convection conditions. The reasonable discrepancies demonstrate the tight correlation between the numerical prediction and the measurement. The thermal performance of the HFH is found to be 12–14% better than the PFH for the natural convection condition. The better performance might be explained by the enlarged external surface and the internal flow via the channel of the HF. The reference HFH is about 14% lighter than the reference PFH. The better thermal performance and the lighter weight of the HFH show the feasibility as the promising heat sink especially for the thermal control of LED street and flood lighting modules.