Numerical investigation of laminar flow and heat transfer in a liquid metal cooled mini-channel heat sink

With the recent trend of miniaturization and high-power output, effective heat dissipation has become the top priority in several industrial applications. This work contributes to the novel and efficient cooling technique that utilizes the liquid metal as working fluid. A numerical analysis of laminar flow and forced convective heat transfer of Galinstan through a mini-channel heat sink exposed to a constant heat flux has been presented. A detailed parametric analysis of the influence of heat sink's geometry, and the inlet velocity on the pressure drop, pumping power and the maximum heat flux has been carried out. Optimized heat sink's dimensions and inlet velocity are obtained. Furthermore, the numerical results are compared with the analytical correlations and discussion concerning the agreement and discrepancy is made. In addition, the flow and heat transfer performance of mini-channel heat sink cooling using liquid metal, nanofluid and water are compared, which intuitively shows the advantage of using liquid metal as coolant.