Thermal analysis of PCM-based hybrid micro-channel heat sinks: A numerical study

Abstract

Heat sinks play a vital part in the heat dissipation in electronic devices and energy systems. Heat generation in the present-time electronic equipment is very high because of the high power density and the miniaturization of the components. An efficient and high-capacity thermal management system is needed for the efficient performance of the latest electron-ic equipment. Micro-channel heat sinks (MCHS) are an effective solution for the cooling of electronic devices in view of large heat dissipation and compactness. The performance im-provement in the MCHS is the prime focus of most of the researchers. In the present work, the improvement of heat transfer in MCHS with the introduction of phase change material (PCM) was investigated numerically with the help of ANSYS-FLUENT. The finding of the computational model applied for the present numerical work was compared with existing literature and noticed a good agreement with both experimental and simulation studies. The performance of three different PCM-based hybrid MCHS models was studied and compared with the model of MCHS without PCM using the parameters, thermal resistance, temperature uniformity, liquid fraction, and Nusselt number. A good augmentation in the performance of PCM-based MCHS with a maximum 7.3% decrement in thermal resistance and 15.26% in-crease in temperature uniformity was observed. 3-dimensional variation of the liquid fraction with Reynolds number and heat flux is also presented.