Natural convective heat transfer of vacuum circuit breaker radiator

With the background of novel high voltage vacuum circuit breaker, the Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) method is used to research natural convective heat transfer between vertical fins of cylinder radiator under different ambient temperatures. It is found that, expanding calculation region and setting pressure boundary condition are able to correctly simulate the natural convection heat transfer. Both air temperature and air velocity are low at inlets of fins gap, while those are high at middles of fins gap. The air temperature becomes higher close to the root of fins, while air velocity is lower due to large viscous drag. Under the same atmospheric temperature, the higher radiator fins temperature is, the higher heat transfer performance will be. At the same radiator fins temperature, the higher atmospheric temperature is, the lower heat transfer performance will be. The results are significant to the thermal and optimization design of radiator with vertical fins of novel high voltage vacuum circuit breaker.