Pressure Drop and Thermal Characteristic Prediction for Staggered Strip Fin Microchannel

Abstract

In this article, pressure drop and thermal characteristic of the staggered strip fin (SSF) microchannel were investigated by using the simulation method. In recent decades, the pressure drop and thermal properties of many fins with different geometries were studied. However, the SSF has a high heat transfer coefficient (HTC) and the highest heat conductance at uniform pumping power. We believe that SSF can be widely used in IC cooling, so it was studied systematically in this article. First, the feasibility of simulation method was verified with the experimental results in a reference. Then, the design of experiment (DOE) was performed to investigate the effect of fin configuration on the pressure drop between the inlet and the outlet of microchannel and the thermal resistance between the base and inlet of microchannel. The results show that the pressure drop is decreased by about 200%, and the thermal resistance is increased by about 100% with channel pitch increased by two times. The ratio of fin width to channel width increased from 0.5 to 1.5, resulting in an increase in pressure drop of about 200% and no significant change in thermal resistance. There is no obvious change in pressure drop and thermal resistance when the fin length and end angle are increased. Finally, the formulas for predicting pressure drop and convective HTC (CHTC) were fit by 220 sets of simulation results, and the formula for predicting thermal resistance was deduced by theory. In addition, the validity of prediction formulas was verified, and the application range of the formula was studied preliminarily.