Thermohydraulic performance of new minichannel heat sink with grooved barriers

Abstract

Nowadays, utilization of micro/mini channel heat sinks (MCHS) has become a popular solution for cooling of electronic systems and maintaining their operating temperature in a desired range. Increasing the contact surface area between fluid and solid zones by geometrical modifications is a promising solution that significantly affects thermal performance and heat transfer in these systems. In this paper, considering thermohydraulic performance, the effect of creating grooves on the middle-placed barriers of a minichannel heat sink is investigated to access a criterion for favorable temperature performance. Evaluating different geometrical parameters of barriers and grooves including cross section, depth and position of horizontal groove as well as vertical groove distance, simultaneous employment of optimal horizontal and vertical groove in the channel at different Reynolds numbers is studied. Outputs including channel base temperature, friction factor ratio and total thermal resistance are studied to evaluate the performance of the proposed minichannel. Results indicate that vortex formation adjacent to solid walls considerably enhances the heat transfer and variation of each geometrical parameters offers a performance enhancement. Moreover, the best thermal performance is obtained by simultaneous employment of the horizontal rectangular groove (x = 0.45 mm, y = 0.2 mm and hg = 0.6 mm) and the vertical groove (dg = 0.4 mm). In the optimal case, the channel base temperature and the total thermal resistance reduces by 11.88 K and 27%, respectively.