Numerical study of the non-uniform channel width arrangement effect on mini-channel heat sink performance

Abstract

The mini/micro-channel heat sinks have already been a successful innovation for cooling of electronic devices, and many factors could affect their thermal performance. However, the flow distribution is one of the fatal factors influencing the performance of the mini/microchannel heat sinks. As we know, uniform flow strongly depends on the optimum structure design of the heat sinks. The particular focus of this work is the channel width arrangement effects on the flow uniformity and heat transfer inside mini-channel heat sinks (MCHSs). The mini-channel heat sinks with five non-uniform channel width arrangements were compared with a mini-channel heat sink with uniform channel width under four inlet flow rates and a fixed heat flux. Overall thermal resistance and pressure drop were used to evaluate the thermal performance of the heat sink. The simulation results show that the non-uniform channel width arrangement is significantly beneficial for achieving uniform flow distribution in the mini-channels and reduces the overall thermal resistance with up to 6.1%. It is found that the 5-type MCHS performs the best flow uniformity and the lowest thermal resistance with a moderate pressure drop. Besides, this study supplies a guideline to optimize the arrangement of channel width.