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TECHNICAL PAPERS

Numerical Study of Turbulent Heat Transfer and Pressure Drop Characteristics in a Water-Cooled Minichannel Heat Sink

[+] Author and Article Information
X. L. Xie, Y. L. He

State Key Laboratory of Multiphase Flow in Power Engineering, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an, Shaanxi 710049, China

W. Q. Tao

State Key Laboratory of Multiphase Flow in Power Engineering, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an, Shaanxi 710049, Chinawqtao@mail.xjtu.edu.cn

J. Electron. Packag 129(3), 247-255 (Dec 13, 2006) (9 pages) doi:10.1115/1.2753887 History: Received November 29, 2005; Revised December 13, 2006

Abstract

With the rapid development of the Information Technology (IT) industry, the heat flux in integrated circuit (IC) chips cooled by air has almost reached its limit at about $100W∕cm2$. Some applications in high technology industries require heat fluxes well beyond such a limitation. Therefore, the search for a more efficient cooling technology becomes one of the bottleneck problems of the further development of the IT industry. The microchannel flow geometry offers a large surface area of heat transfer and a high convective heat transfer coefficient. However, it has been hard to implement because of its very high pressure head required to pump the coolant fluid through the channels. A normal channel size could not give high heat flux, although the pressure drop is very small. A minichannel can be used in a heat sink with quite a high heat flux and a mild pressure loss. A minichannel heat sink with bottom size of $20mm×20mm$ is analyzed numerically for the single-phase turbulent flow of water as a coolant through small hydraulic diameters. A constant heat flux boundary condition is assumed. The effect of channel dimensions, channel wall thickness, bottom thickness, and inlet velocity on the pressure drop, temperature difference, and maximum allowable heat flux are presented. The results indicate that a narrow and deep channel with thin bottom thickness and relatively thin channel wall thickness results in improved heat transfer performance with a relatively high but acceptable pressure drop. A nearly optimized structure of heat sink is found that can cool a chip with heat flux of $350W∕cm2$ at a pumping power of $0.314W$.

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Figures

Figure 1

Schematic view of a minichannel geometry for high heat flux cooling applications

Figure 2

Computational domain for minichannel

Figure 3

Grid test for minichannel with Wc=0.5mm, Hc=5mm, Ww=0.3mm, Hb=0.3mm, and Uin=3m∕s

Figure 4

Effect of channel height on pressure drop and pumping power

Figure 5

Effect of channel height on thermal resistance and max heat flux

Figure 6

Effect of channel width on pressure drop and pumping power

Figure 7

Effect of channel width on thermal resistance and max heat flux

Figure 8

Effect of channel wall thickness on thermal resistance

Figure 9

Effect of bottom thickness on thermal resistance

Figure 10

Pressure drop and pumping power by inlet velocity based on nearly optimal channel geometry

Figure 11

Thermal resistance and maximum heat flux by inlet velocity based on nearly optimal channel geometry

Figure 12

Thermal resistance by pumping power based on nearly optimal channel geometry

Figure 13

Temperature contour at outlet with heat flux 100W∕cm2 and inlet velocity of 2m∕s(unit=m)

Figure 14

Results: Comparison on the effect of inlet velocity on thermal resistance

Figure 15

Results: Comparison on the effect of inlet velocity on pressure drop

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