Performance Augmentation of Single-Phase Heat Transfer in Open-Type Microchannel Heat Sink

Abstract

Single- and two-phase heat transfers from a microchannel heat sink (MCHS) are emerging as innovative methods of cooling for diversified engineering applications including microelectronics, power production, medical, and chemical industries. However, high-pressure drops and miscellaneous flow boiling instabilities are the major impediments of the technology. Open-type microchannels are recently projected to ameliorate a few of these limitations, including flow boiling instabilities and pressure drop penalties. In the current experimental study, heat transfer performance augmentation of single-phase flow in an open-type microchannel heat sink has been studied. Two configurations of the open-type microchannel heat sink, plain open MCHS and extended open MCHS, were fabricated and tested under a mass flux range of and an effective heat flux range of . Water was used as a cooling medium. It has been observed that fins in the plain open MCHS intensify heat transfer performance by 15%, and a maximum wall temperature reduction of 3.7°C has been observed in the current study for the extended open MCHS. On the contrary, a pressure drop penalty of around 18% has been witnessed for the extended open MCHS due to the additional flow obstacle offered by the extended surfaces. The overall thermal performance of the extended open MCHS indicated that the configurations can become substitutes for the closed MCHS in the future.