Thermal and hydraulic performance analysis of a heat sink with corrugated channels and nanofluids

Abstract

Cooling of electronic devices is one of the critical challenges that the electronics industry is facing towards sustainable development. Aiming at lowering the surface temperature of the heat sink to limit thermally induced deformations, corrugated channels and nanofluids are employed to improve the thermal and hydraulic performances of a heat sink. Three-dimensional simulations based on the finite-volume approach are carried out to study conjugated heat transfer in the heat sink. Water-based nanofluids containing $$\hbox {Al}_{2}\hbox {O}_{3}$$ Al 2 O 3 nanoparticles with two different particle sizes (29 nm and 40 nm) and volume fractions less than 4% are employed as the coolant, and their influence on the thermal and hydraulic performance of the heat sink is compared with the base fluid (i.e. water). An empirical model is utilised to approximate the effective transport properties of the nanofluids. Employing corrugated channels instead of straight channels in the heat sink results in an enhancement of 24–36% in the heat transfer performance at the cost of 20–31% increase in the required pumping power leading to an enhancement of 16–24% in the overall performance of the heat sink. Additionally, the numerical predictions indicate that the overall performance of the proposed heat sink design with corrugated channels and water–$$\hbox {Al}_{2}\hbox {O}_{3}$$ Al 2 O 3 nanofluids is 22–40% higher than that of the water-cooled heat sink with straight channels. It is demonstrated that the overall performance of the heat sink cooled with water–$$\hbox {Al}_{2}\hbox {O}_{3}$$ Al 2 O 3 nanofluids increases with reducing the average nanoparticle size. Additionally, the maximum temperature rise in the heat sinks is determined for different thermal loads.

Improving the performance of mini-channel heat sink by using wavy channel and different types of nanofluids

“…With the Reynolds rise, a thermal boundary layers in the channels decreases with the temperature gradient increasing near to channel walls, thereby contributing to higher heat transfer. Fluid flow through waves is subject to a centrifugallforce which disrupts a flow field and which can result in a recirculation of fluids 27 .…”

“…The Combined influence of Nusselts number and the friction factor was employed to measure the overall hydrothermallbehavior of wavy channel using PEC as shown in Eq. ( 20 ) 27 where subscript (o and i) represents a conventional heat sink and wavy mini channel.…”

“…This is primarily attributed to higher thermal efficiency of nanofluids in contrast to a base fluid, This leads to an increase in the heat conduction contribution to the total energy transmission and it increases with increasing proportion of the volume volume of a nanoparticles. It's that attributable to increased overall area of heat transfer between nano particle and a base fluid, and the increase in the rate of collision of nanoparticle that increases the particle's Brownian motion, causing in an increase in the mixture's effective thermal conductivity 27 . Figure 17 shows the effect of nanoparticles type on friction factor which Ag has the maximum and Al 2 O 3 has the minimum values for f.

Figure 16 Show Nusselt number (Nu) versus Volume concentration for different channels.

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“…The hydropower and thermal efficiency of a curvy channel and nano-fluids as a coolant was numerically investigated by Naranjani et al 27 . As the coolant, water-based nano-fluids containing Al 2 O 3 nanoparticles with volume fractions less than 4 percent were used.…”

Numerical Analysis of Mixed Convective Heat Transfer from a Square Cylinder Utilizing Nanofluids with Multi-Phase Modelling Approach

“…Improvement in heat transfer in the ranges 2.55-29.05% and 9.78-50.64% was observed for Al 2 O 3 -water and CuO-water nanofluids, respectively. The same research group (Naranjani et al [31]) further investigated the thermal as well as hydraulic performance of heat sink with corrugated channels using nanofluids. About 22-40% enhancement in heat transfer was reported while using nanofluids compared to water as coolant.…”