Numerical Analysis of Flow and Thermal Performance of Liquid-Cooling Microchannel Heat Sinks with Bifurcation

Abstract

Single-phase liquid-cooling microchannels have received great attention to remove the gradually increased heat loads of heat sinks. Proper changes of the flow path and/or heat transfer surface can result in much better thermal performance of microchannel heat sinks. In this study, a kind of rectangular straight microchannel heat sink with bifurcation flow arrangement has been designed, and the corresponding laminar flow and heat transfer have been investigated numerically. Four different configurations are considered. The effects of the bifurcation ratio (the initial channel number over the bifurcating channel number) and length ratio (the channel length before bifurcation over the bifurcation channel length) on laminar heat transfer, pressure drop, and thermal resistance are considered and compared with those of the traditional straight microchannel heat sink without bifurcation flow. The overall thermal resistances subjected to inlet Reynolds number and pumping power are compared for the five microchannel heat sinks. Results show that the thermal performance of the microchannel heat sink with bifurcation flow is better than that of the corresponding straight microchannel heat sink. The heat sinks with larger bifurcation ratio and length ratio provide much better thermal performance. It is suggested to employ bifurcation flow path in the liquid-cooling microchannel heat sinks to improve the overall thermal performance by proper design of the bifurcation position and number of channels.

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the NPU Foundation for Fundamental Research (NPU-FFR-JC20130115), the NPU Foundation for Ao-xiang Star Program, and by the Specialized Research Fund for the Doctoral Program of Higher Education of China (20116102120021).