Numerical simulation of microchannel heat exchanger using CFD

Modern electronic devices include faster processing times and greater compactness. Heat generation rises as a result of miniaturization and higher power density. The working temperature of electronic components increases beyond their critical limits as a result of increased heat generation. Higher temperatures cause the components to perform poorly and occasionally fail. In order to avoid failures and maintain the long-term dependability of electronic devices, an effective cooling technique is required. One potential solution for this is to use microchannel heat sinks to reduce the temperature of integrated chips (ICs). To get the best design, it is crucial to do thermal analyses on various channel layouts and their cross sections and compare how they operate. In this study, a microchannel heat sink’s effectiveness at dissipating heat was examined with respect to its hydraulic diameter, surface area and number of channels using the commercial computational fluid dynamics (CFD) software ANSYS Fluent. Numerical analysis of four alternative 3D heat sinks employing water as a coolant was performed. A laminar and incompressible fluid model was used to conduct steady-state analysis. The simulations were carried out with boundary conditions of a constant mass flow rate of 0.00623875 kg/s and a constant flux of 143,000 W/m 2 for all the models. The results of the study showed that the surface temperature decreased with an increase in cross-sectional area, number of channels and hydraulic diameter from 361 K for a simple rectangular model to 332 K, 326 K, and 324 K for a 5-channel fin, 8-channel fin and 11-channel fin model, respectively. The 8-channel fin model was found to have the best overall heat transfer coefficient compared with the other models, with an increase of 188% above the basic rectangular model.