Analysis of Conjugate Heat Transfer in a Three-Dimensional Microchannel Heat Sink for Cooling of Electronic Components

A three-dimensional model is developed to investigate flow and conjugate heat transfer in the microchannel-based heat sink for electronic packaging applications. The incompressible laminar flow Navier-Stokes equations of motion as well as the energy conservation equations for the fluid and solid are employed as the governing model equations which are numerically solved using the generalized single-equation framework for solving conjugate problems. First, the theoretical model developed is validated by comparing the model predictions of the thermal resistance and the friction coefficient with available experimental data for a wide range of Reynolds numbers. Then, the parametric calculations are performed to investigate the effects of different working fluids, solid substrate materials and channel geometry on conjugate heat transfer in the microchannel heat sink. The bulk and wall temperature and heat flux distributions as well as the average heat transfer characteristics are reported and discussed. Important practical design recommendations are also provided regarding the cooling efficiency of the microchannel heat sink.