Computational Study of Hydrothermal Performance of Microchannel Heat Sink With Trefoil Shape Ribs

Traditional cooling technologies are now become inadequate for electronic chips cooling due to their size reduction and increase in generated heat flux. Microchannel heat sink (MCHS) is promising candidate due to its superior cooling performance than its competitors. The aim of this study is to investigate the hydrothermal performance of MCHS with novel trefoil shape ribs. The three configurations of trefoil shape ribs considered in this study are: MC-AWTR (all wall trefoil ribs), MC-SWTR (side wall trefoil ribs), and MC-BWTR (base wall trefoil ribs). The performance of MCHS is evaluated on the basis of thermal enhancement factor, thermal resistance, transport efficiency and entropy generation at Re=100-1000. The results predict that addition of trefoil ribs to walls of smooth microchannel significantly improve its thermal performance at cost of pressure penalty. Nusselt number and average heat transfer coefficient tends to increase with rise in Reynolds number while thermal resistance and entropy generation reduces. Highest pressure drop occurs for MC-AWTR configuration due to more obstruction of the fluid flow. MC-SWTR configuration has highest thermal enhancement factor among all configurations while MC-AWTR has lowest due to large pressure drop penalty at all Reynold numbers. So, overall MC-SWTR shows superior performance than any other considered trefoil rib configuration.