Effect of variation of cylindrical pin fins height on the overall performance of microchannel heat sink

Abstract

Numerous researches are performed to take account of the heat transfer in the microchannel heat sink, due to its high efficiency and application in various fields of microelectronics. An attempt has been made to numerically investigate the effects of variation of cylindrical pin fin height, entrenched on bottom wall of microchannel. Three cases of microchannel heat sink are prepared: case 1: plain rectangular channel; case 2 and case 3 with decreasing pin fin height and with increasing pin fin height in the direction of flow, respectively. Also, diameter of pin fin is varied to obtain effects of any underlying flow feature on heat transfer augmentation. The analysis is performed for single-phase fluid deionized ultra-filtered water with temperature-dependent properties, for low Reynolds number range of 150–300. Higher Nusselt number is obtained for case 2, whereas lower pressure drop is obtained in case 3. The overall thermal performance of case 3 with increasing pin fin height outperforms the corresponding case 2 with decreasing pin fin height for the same pin fin diameter, due to the velocity distribution and reduced pressure drop in the downstream region in microchannel, which shows that the downstream region of microchannel heat sink has a significant impact in terms of the overall efficiency while establishing pressure drop as essential characteristics.