Introducing a novel cooling system with combined utilization of microchannel heat sinks and pulsating heat pipes

Abstract

In this research, a novel cooling system based on the combined use of a microchannel heat sink and pulsating heat pipes has been introduced. The pulsating heat pipe is considered a part of the microchannel heat sink structure, and it is the first time that these two systems have been studied simultaneously. Pulsating heat pipe has been modeled in a three-dimensional form in the wall of the microchannel heat sink, and the two-phase volume of fluid (VOF) model was used for numerical modeling. The effect of the physical and geometrical parameters of the pulsating heat pipe, such as the filling ratio and the number of loops, on the thermal performance of the microchannel heat sink has been studied.It has been shown that the proposed system leads to a significant reduction in the thermal resistance of the system and has a better performance compared to other common methods of increasing the microchannel heat sink performance at equal pumping power. By embedding the four-loop heat pipe in the microchannel heat sink, the thermal resistance of the microchannel heat sink decreases by 24.1%; Meanwhile, other common methods lead to a maximum of 14.5% improvement in the thermal performance of the microchannel heat sink.