Dependence of Flow Boiling Heat Transfer Coefficient on Location and Vapor Quality in a Microchannel Heat Sink

Abstract

Experiments were conducted to determine the influence of local vapor quality on local heat transfer coefficient in flow boiling in an array of microchannels. Additionally, the variation of local heat transfer coefficient along the length and width of the microchannel heat sink for given operating conditions was investigated over a range of flow parameters. Each test piece includes a silicon parallel microchannel heat sink with 25 integrated heaters and 25 temperature sensors arranged in a 5×5 grid, allowing for uniform heat dissipation and local temperature measurements. Channel dimensions ranged from 100 μm to 400 μm in depth and 100 μm to 5850 μm in width; the working fluid for all cases was the perfluorinated dielectric liquid, FC-77. The heat transfer coefficient is found to increase with increasing vapor quality, reach a peak, and then decrease rapidly due to partial dryout on the channel walls. The vapor quality at which the peak is observed shows a strong dependence on mass flux, occurring at lower vapor qualities with increasing mass flux for fixed channel dimensions. Variations in local heat transfer coefficient across the test piece were examined both along the flow direction and in a direction transverse to it; observed trends included variations due to entrance region effects, two-phase transition, non-uniform flow distribution, and channel wall dryout.