Numerical investigation of novel manifold microchannel heat sinks with countercurrent regions

Abstract

Manifold microchannel (MMC) heat sink is a potential method to dissipate high heat fluxes of electronic devices. Traditional Z-type MMC is a simple configuration but usually encounters high temperature difference and pressure drop. In this work, we introduced countercurrent flows to alleviate these problems by revising the design of manifold configurations. Six cases with different manifold arrangements are numerically investigated using single-phase deionized water at mass flow rates ranging from 0.04 - 0.12 g/s. The results show that the maximum temperature, average temperature, and temperature difference of the revised arrangements are all lower than these of the traditional Z-type manifold arrangement. The cases with countercurrent regions can reduce the maximum temperature around 5 K compared with the original cases with parallel regions. The temperature difference of the ZU-type MMC with double-layer countercurrent flow configuration is lower than 4 K, which is about 25% of the original Z-type MMC. For the revised manifold configuration with countercurrent flows, the pressure drops also decrease due to the split of inlets and outlets of the manifold. The pressure drops of single-layer and double-layer countercurrent manifolds are respectively 27.13% and 33.36% lower than that of the case with traditional Z-type manifold. This leads to a higher comprehensive performance of revised cases with countercurrent flows. Besides the better temperature uniformity, the fluid flow becomes more uniform in the microchannels for the revised case. The improved ZU-type MMC with double-layer countercurrent flow can dissipate 1100 W/cm2 for single-phase flow with a temperature increase of 80 K and a pressure drop of 22 kPa at mass flow rate of 1.2 g/s.