Numerical investigation of laminar heat transfer performance of various cooling channel designs

This study addresses the heat transfer performance of various cooling channel designs e.g., parallel, serpentine, wavy, coiled and novel hybrid channels. The cooling channel is designed to be placed on top of an electronic chip which dissipates heat at a constant flux. Laminar flow of a Newtonian fluid in a square cross-section channel is investigated using a three-dimensional computational fluid dynamic approach. Five channels Reynolds number are investigated to quantify the effect of Reynolds number on the performance of the cooling channel designs. Advantages and limitations of each design are discussed in the light of numerical results. Figures of merit, viz, heat transferred per unit pumping power are compared for the wide variety of channels examined. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.