New method of flow maldistribution mitigation in parallel microchannel heat sink

Abstract

Microchannel heat sinks (MCHS) are explored as integrated cooling option in diversified applications ranging from microelectronic devices to nuclear reactors. Parallel channel MCHS suffers from the problem of flow maldistribution in channels. The phenomenon of flow maldistribution causes undesired effects such as non-uniform temperature distribution, increase in base maximum temperature and drop in MCHS performance. In the present single phase numerical study; flow maldistribution in vertical supply MCHS has been estimated by taking entire heat sink as computational domain. Three-dimensional governing equations for both fluid flow and energy transfer are solved by finite volume method. A novel heat sink design by splitting the inlet flow in two equal parts has been proposed to effectively reduce flow maldistribution problem in MCHS. Results of velocity distribution, temperature distribution of fluid and overall thermal performance of proposed MCHS are compared with the conventional MCHS design. Proposed scheme helps in reducing flow maldistribution problem significantly (∼55%) as compared to conventional MCHS. © Copyright 2017 ASME.