3D simulation of water flow in porous heat sink with trapezoidal microchannel

Abstract

Effects of different entry/exit arrangements on thermal performance of porous microchannel heat sink (MCHS) of any geometry have not been studied yet. In this investigation, the effects of utilization of four different entry/exit arrangements have been studied numerically on electronic chip cooling utilizing trapezoidal MCHS with porous micro channels and porosity of 0.88. In Atype arrangement (Figure 1), entry and exit are located in the center of the northern and southern walls, respectively. Entry and exit in B-type heat sink, in contrast to A-type, have been moved to the corners asymmetrically from the center of the northern and southern walls. Both Entry and exit in C-type are located in the western wall respectively in the center of the distributor and flow collector. In D-type heat sink, the exit has not changed compared with the C-type, but the entry has been moved to the eastern wall. For this purpose, three dimensional simulations of laminar forced convection flow in microchannels and conduction in solid parts of MCHS by applying constant heat flux of 150 kWm-2 at its base plate have been performed utilizing the finite volume method and the commercial Ansys-CFX code. The results indicate that using porous media is effective in reducing the MCHS base plate temperature and in this regard the D-type arrangement has the best performance among the heat sinks studied. With considering positive effect of using porous media on increasing the heat transfer coefficient and its negative effect on increasing the required pumping power, the A-type arrangement has the best performance.