Conjugate heat transfer enhancement in the mini-channel heat sink by realizing the optimized flow pattern

Abstract Mini-channel heat sinks are popular in cooling high heat flux devices due to the high convective heat transfer performance associated with moderate pressure drop penalty. It is of great significance to further improve the thermal hydraulic performance in the mini-channel heat sink so as to adapt it to higher heat flux conditions. In this paper, a new method of realizing the optimized flow field to enhance the thermal hydraulic performance was carried out successfully in the mini-channel heat sink. The chosen mini-channel heat sink was 30 mm × 30 mm in substrate size with Reynolds number ranging from 100 to 1100. Through conjugate heat transfer optimization based on exergy destruction minimization principle, the optimized flow pattern was characterized by three pairs of longitudinal swirls flow. Subsequently, the inclined parallelepiped ribs were proposed to realize the optimized flow pattern in the mini-channel heat sink. The heat transfer enhancement mechanism was investigated by analyzing velocity distributions, temperature distributions, and heat convection intensity. Besides, the total thermal resistance was decreased and the exergy destruction minimization principle was verified. As a result, the variation ranges of Nu/Nu0, f/f0, efficiency evaluation criterion (EEC), and overall performance criterion (R3) were 1.35-5.92, 1.27-8.75, 0.68-1.12, and 1.31-4.22, respectively. The maximum average heat flux could achieve 3.2 × 106 W/m2 within a temperature difference of 60K between substrate and fluid. The configured parameters pitch ratio (PR) and width ratio (WR) were recommended as 1 and 0.2, respectively. This work is conducive to the structural design of mini-channel heat sinks.