Abstract
The flow in channels of microdevices is usually in the developing regime. Three-dimensional laminar flow characteristics of a nanofluid in microchannel plate fin heat sinks are investigated numerically in this paper. Deionized water and Al2O3–water nanofluid are employed as the cooling fluid in our work. The effects of the Reynolds number (100 < Re < 1000), channel aspect ratio (0 < ε < 1), and nanoparticle volume fraction (0.5% < Φ < 5%) on pressure drop and entropy generation in microchannel plate fin heat sinks are examined in detail. Herein, the general expression of the entropy generation rate considering entrance effects is developed. The results revealed that the frictional entropy generation and pressure drop increase as nanoparticle volume fraction and Reynolds number increase, while decrease as the channel aspect ratio increases. When the nanoparticle volume fraction increases from 0 to 3% at Re = 500, the pressure drop of microchannel plate fin heat sinks with ε = 0.5 increases by 9%. It is demonstrated that the effect of the entrance region is crucial for evaluating the performance of microchannel plate fin heat sinks. The study may shed some light on the design and optimization of microchannel heat sinks.
Highlights
Recent advances in manufacturing technologies have driven the development of microelectronicmechanical systems (MEMS) [1]
In detail, when the nanoparticle volume fraction increases from 0 to 1% at Re = 500, the pressure drop of rectangular microchannel heat sinks with the aspect ratio ε = 0.5 increases by 3%
The effects of the Reynolds number, channel aspect ratio, and nanofluid volume fraction on pressure drop and entropy generation in microchannel plate fin heat sinks were analyzed in detail
Summary
Recent advances in manufacturing technologies have driven the development of microelectronicmechanical systems (MEMS) [1]. Significant heat dissipation generated by the electronic chips requires a special cooling system [3]. One of the most potential applications for MEMS is the microchannel heat sink, and it has been successfully utilized for controlling the temperature in various microdevices [4]. Accurate modeling of fluid flow and heat transfer is quite important for numerous MEMS applications [5]. The recent development of microscale fluid systems has attracted much academic research of fluid flow and heat transfer in microchannels with different cross-sections [6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14]
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