A Review on Application of Pin-Fins in Enhancing Heat Transfer

The pin-fin is one of the main technologies in enhancing heat transfer. The accelerated flow and vortex structures are produced, which can disrupt the development of the flow boundary layer. The configuration of the pin-fin is obvious for heat transfer and flow characteristics, including its shape, size, and arrangement in the cooling channel. This work provides a detailed introduction to the application of pin-fins in enhancing heat transfer and reducing flow resistance, including the conventional shapes, improved shapes based on circular pin-fins and irregular shapes. At the same time, the influence of the diameter, height and density of pin-fins on heat transfer and flow performance is studied, and the influence mechanism is analyzed from the perspective of boundary layers. In addition, some applications that combine pin-fins with other cooling methods to further improve performance are analyzed. In terms of the optimization technology, the structure optimization for pin-fin shape and the layout optimization for pin-fin array are summarized. Therefore, this review provides a wide range of literature for the design of internal cooling channel pin-fins.