Numerical investigation on heat transfer and fluid flow in a multi-minichannel heat sink: Effect of channel configurations

Abstract

Three dimensional numerical simulation has been performed to explore the hydro-thermal performance of novel configurations of multichannel (MMCHS) heat sink. The study included the effect of three channel configurations matched with chosen inlet/outlet locations of the cooling fluid on the flow distribution between channels. The three new modified channel configurations were considered in this work, namely, arc-shaped, S-shaped and wave-shaped channels. The study is conducted under laminar flow condition with single phase flow using water as a coolant of mass flow rate range (0.002–0.005 kg s−1). The results revealed that the new modified channels are capable of enhancing heat transfer comparative with conventional straight channel. Among the all configurations, the wave-shaped channels showed the highest enhancement in Nusselt number of 30.5% followed by S-shaped channels with 18.7% and arc-shaped channels with 10.8%. Meanwhile, the arc-shaped channels achieved lowest pressure drop with a ratio of 16% less than the traditional channel. Furthermore, it's found that temperature uniformity for new channel configurations is better than traditional channel. The maximum difference in temperature distribution showed a reduction about 2.64 K in wave-shaped channels. The best performance factor of MMCHS has been accomplished by wave-shaped channels with a value of 1.3.

Keywords

• Mini-channel heat sink
• Numerical simulation
• Channel configuration
• Performance evaluation factor
• Maldistribution