Abstract
The present study investigates the thermo-hydraulic characteristics of a microchannel sink with novel trefoil Shaped ribs. The motivation for this form of rib shape is taken from the design of lung alveoli that exchange oxygen and carbon dioxide. This study has been conducted numerically by using a code from the commercially available Fluent software. The trefoil shaped ribs were mounted on the centerline of different walls of the microchannel in three different configurations. These consisted of base wall trefoil ribs (MC-BWTR), sidewall trefoil ribs (MC-SWTR), all wall trefoil ribs (MC-AWTR) and smooth channel (MC-SC) having no ribs on its wall. The streamline distance between the ribs was kept constant at 0.4 mm, and the results were compared by using pressure drop (∆p), Nusselt number (Nu), thermal resistance (Rth) and thermal enhancement factor (η). The results indicated that the addition of trefoil ribs to any wall improved heat transfer characteristics at the expense of an increase in the friction factor. The trends of the pressure drop and heat transfer coefficient were the same, which indicated higher values for MC-AWTR followed by MC-SWTR and a lower value for MC-BWTR. In order to compare the thermal and hydraulic performance of all the configurations simultaneously, the overall performance was quantified in terms of the thermal enhancement factor, which was higher than one in each case, except for MC-AWTR, in 100 < Re < 200 regimes. The thermal enhancement factor in the ribbed channel was the highest for MC-SWTR followed by MC-BWTR, and it was the lowest for MC-AWTR. Moreover, the thermal enhancement factor increases with the Reynolds number (Re) for each case. This confirms that the increment in the Nusselt number with velocity is more significant than the pressure drop. The highest thermal enhancement factor of 1.6 was attained for MC-SWTR at Re = 1000, and the lowest value of 0.87 was achieved for MC-AWTR at Re = 100.
Highlights
The increasing demand for digitalization has shifted the trend of the modern world towards the miniaturization of electronic equipment where hundreds of thousands of transistors are installed on a single silicon chip
Bio-inspired rib shape is used where ribs are added in three different wall configurations consisting of ribs added to the base wall (BWTR), Sidewall (SWTR) and (AWTR)
The validated numerical modal is used for calculating the ∆p, h, f / f o, Nu/Nu0, Rth and η for MC-base wall with trefoil ribs (BWTR), MC-sidewall with trefoil ribs (SWTR) and MC-all walls with trefoil ribs (AWTR)
Summary
The increasing demand for digitalization has shifted the trend of the modern world towards the miniaturization of electronic equipment where hundreds of thousands of transistors are installed on a single silicon chip. Due to the reduction in the sizes of these equipment, the power density increased rapidly and can be as high as up to 1 W/mm. Great care is needed to maintain such equipment for its safety and improved life cycle. Modern techniques including cooling using liquid such as a microjet, heat pipe, spray impingement and microchannel cooling are introduced to fulfill the requirement of higher heat dissipation [1]. The cooling techniques have been improved from cooling by force convection and air to more advanced techniques. The microchannel cooling system was first coined in 1981 by Tuckerman and Pease [2]
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