Experimental and numerical investigation of hydrothermal performance of a microchannel heat sink with pin fins

Abstract

The hydrothermal performance of the microchannel heat sinks with different pin fins (PF-MCHS) is studied experimentally and numerically. Five pin fins, namely rectangular pin fin (RPF), backward triangular pin fin (BTPF), forward triangular pin fin (FTPF), diamond pin fin (DPF) and ellipsoidal pin fin (EPR) are integrated in the microchannel for enhancing heat transfer. The results show that the PF-MCHSs possess 51.8–94.8 % higher average Nusselt number than the conventional microchannel (CMC) without pin fins, which indicates that these pin fins all can cause significant heat enhancement in the microchannels. Among all finned microchannels, the MC- RPF and MC-BTPF can offer the larger Nusselt number than the other microchannels. In addition to the improved thermal performance, the pin fins also result in the larger apparent friction factor. Furthermore, taking the MC-RPF and MC-BTPF as examples, three non-dimensional parameters α = P/L, β = wp/hc and γ = lp/hc are proposed for optimizing the global characteristics of microchannels. The rise of Nussle number and apparent friction factor is often accompanied by a decrease in α, or an increase in β and γ.

Keywords

• Heat transfer
• Microchannel
• Pin fin
• Pressure drop
• Hydrothermal performance