Investigation on the thermal and hydrodynamic performance of a microchannel heat sink partially filled with porous medium

Abstract

Microchannel heat sinks with porous media are promising solutions for high heat flux applications. This work presents a numerical study on the evaluation and optimization of microchannel heat sinks partially filled with porous medium. The thermal and hydrodynamic performance of the microchannel heat sinks are first systematically investigated and compared with those of the fully filled and unfilled counterparts. The optimization of the partially filled microchannel heat sinks is then conducted by using the response surface method, focusing on the effects of five parameters, including the height and width of the porous medium at the inlet, the height and width of the porous medium at the outlet, and the Reynolds number, on the thermal and hydrodynamic performance of the microchannel heat sinks. Furthermore, the optimization problem with two objective functions is analyzed by calculating the Pareto optimal set within the considered design parameter space. Depending on the available pumping power, the design and operation parameters could be selected from the Pareto optimal set to achieve the best heat transfer performance.