Abstract
Developments in applications such as rocket nozzles, miniature nuclear reactors and solar thermal generation pose high-density heat dissipation challenges. In these applications, a large amount heat must be removed in a limited space under high temperature. In order to handle this kind of cooling problem, this paper proposes liquid metal-based microchannel heat sinks. Using a numerical method, the flow and heat transfer performances of liquid metal-based heat sinks with different working fluid types, diverse microchannel cross-section shapes and various inlet velocities were studied. By solving the 3-D steady and conjugate heat transfer model, we found that among all the investigated cases, lithium and circle were the most appropriate choices for the working fluid and microchannel cross-section shape, respectively. Moreover, inlet velocity had a great influence on the flow and heat transfer performances. From 1 m/s to 9 m/s, the pressure drop increased as much as 65 times, and the heat transfer coefficient was enhanced by about 74.35%.
Highlights
Microchannel Heat Sinks under HighIn many industrial applications, such as rocket nozzles, miniature nuclear reactors and solar thermal generation, one of the major concerns is heat dissipation [1]
It could be seen that taking Li as the working fluid has the best cooling effect while taking K as the working fluid has the worst
Numerical investigations of flow and heat transfer performances in liquid metal-based microchannel heat sinks are presented in this paper
Summary
In many industrial applications, such as rocket nozzles, miniature nuclear reactors and solar thermal generation, one of the major concerns is heat dissipation [1]. The studies show that changing the geometrical factors could result in the optimization of average temperature, pressure drop, heat transfer coefficient, Nusselt number, as well as flow and temperature uniformity Jing and He [13] numerically studied the hydraulic and thermal performances of microchannel heat sinks with three different channel cross-sectional shapes: rectangle, ellipse and triangle. In order to solve the problem of high-density heat dissipation under high temperature and limited space, this paper takes liquid metal-based microchannel heat sinks as object, establishing 3D physical and mathematical numerical models, so that flow and heat transfer performances with diverse working fluid types, various microchannel cross-section shapes and different inlet velocities could be obtained and analyzed. As object, establishing 3D physical and mathematical numerical models, so that flow and heat transfer performances with diverse working fluid types, various microchannel crosssection shapes and different inlet velocities could be obtained and analyzed
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