Simulation of fluid flow and heat transfer in microchannel cooling for LTCC electronic packages

The hydrodynamic and thermal characteristics of microchannel networks are investigated by finite element analysis with commercial software Fluent. The simulation model is based on fabricated thick film LTCC substrate with 3D cooling microchannels. A comparison of the cooling performance among fractal-shaped microchannel, parallel microchannel, serpentine microchannel, spiral microchannel is also conducted numerically based on the same heat flux and the same mass flow rate. It is found that fractal-shaped microchannel facilitates the lowest fluid pressure drop and the most uniform temperature distribution over the substrate, and that the spiral microchannel network enables the smallest temperature rise.