Profit and performance boost of straight, wavy, and combined minichannel heat sinks by counter-current pattern

Abstract

A 3D numerical simulation is carried out to investigate thermal and hydraulic characteristics of the straight, wavy, and combined minichannel heat sinks (MCHSs) with both co- and counter-current patterns. An aspect ratio with a hydraulic diameter of 1 mm is adopted for all models. The coolant is water under laminar flow regime (Re = 100 – 900), and the input heat flux is 100 kW/m2. First, the employed procedure and obtained results are verified by using the current experimental results and previous data reported by literature. Then, a detailed analysis is performed to find the profit and performance boost of the counter-current pattern compared to the co-current pattern. The results show that replacing the co-current pattern with the counter-current pattern can significantly reduce the maximum temperature difference at the base of MCHSs, leading to more uniform temperature. This reduction can reach up to about 18.5 K at Re = 100. The important point is that the effect of changing the flow pattern in the straight MCHS is greater than the other ones. However, all enhanced MCHSs (wavy and combined) illustrate better overall performances compared to the straight one. A continuous enhancement is observed in the overall performance index with increasing Reynolds number, and the maximum value of 2.22 is found at Re = 900 for the wavy MCHS with counter-current pattern. Finally, a comparative study is carried out, and it found that a change in the flow pattern can work better than many structural modifications in wavy MCHSs.