Investigating the effect of the presence of a pulsating heat pipe on the geometrical parameters of the microchannel heat sink

Abstract

In this study, the effect of the presence of a pulsating heat pipe on the geometrical parameters of the microchannel heat sink will be investigated. The embedding of a pulsating heat pipe (PHP) in the solid part of the microchannel heat sink (MCHS) increases the cooling performance of the MCHS and reduces the maximum temperature of the electronic piece. A numerical investigation of MCHS equipped with a PHP is investigated and compared with an optimized conventional MCHS without PHP. The inverse problem solution approach is used to optimize the geometric parameters of the MCHS. The geometrical variables in the optimization process are N (number of channels), α (aspect ratio of the channel), and β (width ratio of the channel to pitch). The pumping power is considered a constraint and is tried to reach the minimized objective function (thermal resistance (R)). Results show that the optimal values of geometrical and physical parameters change from N = 100, α = 13.9, β = 0.6, R = 0.0268, in conventional MCHS to N = 120, α = 14.3, β = 0.7, R = 0.0231 in MCHS with PHP. At this point, the system’s thermal performance improved by 16.02% compared to the previous optimal state.

Keywords:

• Microchannel heat sink
• optimization
• pulsating heat pipe
• thermal resistance

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.