CFD study of liquid-cooled heat sinks with microchannel flow field configurations for electronics, fuel cells, and concentrated solar cells

A study of the heat transfer performance of liquid-cooled heat sinks with conventional and novel micro-channel flow field configurations for application in electronic devices, fuel cells, and concentrated solar cells is presented in this paper. The analyses were based on computations using the CFD software ANSYS FLUENT®. The flow regime in heat sinks is constrained to laminar flow in the study. Details of the heat transfer performance, particularly, the uniformity of temperature distribution on the heating surface, as well as the pressure losses and pumping power in the operation of the studied heat sinks were obtained. Comparisons of the flow distribution uniformity in multiple flow channels, temperature uniformity on heating surfaces, and pumping power consumption of heat sinks with novel flow field configurations and conventional flow field configurations were conducted. It was concluded that the novel flow field configurations studied in this work exhibit appreciable benefits for application in heat sinks.

► We present novel designs of flow channel configurations in liquid cooled heat sinks. ► The flow and heat transfer in heat sinks were simulated using CFD tool. ► The temperature and pressure loss in novel and conventional heat sinks were studied. ► Figure of merit of heat sinks in different flow channel configurations was presented. ► The heat sinks having our novel design of flow channel configurations are excellent.