Computational fluid dynamics for thermal performance of a water-cooled minichannel heat sink with different chip arrangements
International Journal of Numerical Methods for Heat & Fluid Flow
ISSN: 0961-5539
Article publication date: 29 April 2014
Abstract
Purpose
With the development of electronic devices, including the desires of integration, miniaturization, high performance and the output power, cooling requirement of chips have been increased gradually. Water-cooled minichannel is an effective cooling technology for cooling of heat sinks. The minichannel flow geometry offers large surface area for heat transfer and a high convective heat transfer coefficient with only a moderate pressure loss. The purpose of this paper is to analyze a minichannel heat sink having the bottom size of 35 mm×35 mm numerically. Two kinds of chip arrangement are investigated: diagonal arrangement and parallel arrangement.
Design/methodology/approach
Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) technique is used to investigate the flow and thermal fields in forced convection in a three-dimensional minichannels heat sink with different chip arrangements. The standard k-e turbulence model is applied for the turbulence simulations on the minichannel heat sink.
Findings
The results show that the bottom surface of the heat sink with various chip arrangements will have different temperature distribution and thermal resistance. A suitable chip arrangement will achieve a good cooling performance for electronic devices.
Research limitations/implications
The fluid is incompressible and the thermophysical properties are constant.
Practical implications
New and additional data will be helpful as guidelines in the design of heat sinks to achieve a good thermal performance and a long lifetime in operation.
Originality/value
In real engineering situations, chips are always placed in various manners according to design conditions and constraints. In this case the assumption of uniform heat flux is acceptable for the surfaces of the chips rather than for the entire bottom surface of the heat sink.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
This work was supported by NPU Foundation for Fundamental Research (NPU-FFR-JC20130115) and NPU Foundation for Ao-xiang Star Program, and by Specialized Research Fund for the Doctoral Program of Higher Education of China (20116102120021).
Citation
Xie, G., Li, S., Sunden, B. and Zhang, W. (2014), "Computational fluid dynamics for thermal performance of a water-cooled minichannel heat sink with different chip arrangements", International Journal of Numerical Methods for Heat & Fluid Flow, Vol. 24 No. 4, pp. 797-810. https://doi.org/10.1108/HFF-01-2013-0013
Publisher
:Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2014, Emerald Group Publishing Limited