Investigating the thermal efficiency and pressure drop of a nanofluid within a micro heat sink with a new circular design used to cool electronic equipment

Abstract

The present study numerically simulates a new circular micro heat sink (HS) used to cool electronic equipment (i.e., CPU). The HS contained Al₂O₃-water nanofluid (NF) at the concentration of 0–1%. The HS had a diameter and a thickness of 7.6 and 0.5 mm, respectively. It included two separate inlets with a 6 mm-diameter middle section subjected to a fixed heat flux of 100 W/cm². NF flows were employed to cool the HS at the Reynolds numbers of 500–1500. The FVM-based SIMPLE algorithm was developed to obtain the entropy generation, thermal efficiency, and pressure drop. The results revealed that a rise in Re number and NF concentration enhanced Nu and head loss, while reduced the maximum and average temperatures of the electronic device. The best figure of merit (FOM) of the HS was found to be 1.12. A raise in the fluid velocity and NF concentration increased the pumping power but reduced thermal resistance.

Keywords:

• Cooling
• circular micro heat sink
• nanofluid
• efficiency
• pressure drop