Investigation on novel inertial minichannel to mitigate maldistribution induced high temperature zones

Abstract

Axial conduction in channels depends on inlet velocity and thermal conductivity of the working fluid. In the case of parallel channels, axial conduction depends on heat sink configuration and inlet velocity. That at increased flow rates, the parallel channel generates flow maldistribution and develops localized high temperature zones in the heat sink. Effective use of heat sink configuration to mitigate axial conduction is found in the literature; however, the axial conduction effects are not suppressed in the parallel channels. Henceforth, the present study provides experimental and numerical insight to evaluate the potential of ribs and inertial based spillway channels to overcome the above mentioned problems in parallel channels. Especially, four different heat sink concepts were designed using copper material; normal channel, ribbed channel, ribbed inclined, and ribbed lifted. In which normal channel is experimented with and used as a reference, while the remaining channel types were investigated numerically. The factors such as maldistribution, thermal resistance, and pressure drop are considered to evaluate the impact of the ribs on inlet velocity. The ribbed inclined channel was found to perform better than other types and developed a 33 % lower center channel velocity than the normal channel. The temperature near the exit of the ribbed inclined channel was observed to be more even and the entire width of the minichannel was maintained at 47 °C, this trend was not noticed using other configurations.