Search results

This study aims to investigate a new circuitous minichannel cold plate (MCP) design involving flow fragmentation. The overall thermal performance and the temperature uniformity analysis are performed and compared with the traditional serpentine design. The substrate thickness and its thermal conductivity are varied to analyse the effect of axial-back conduction due to the conjugate nature of heat transfer.

The traditional serpentine minichannel is modified into five new fragmented designs with two inlets and two outlets. A three-dimensional numerical model involving the effect of conjugate heat transfer with a single-phase laminar fluid flow subjected to constant heat flux is solved using a finite volume-based computational fluid dynamics solver.

The minimum and maximum temperature differences are observed for the two branch fragmented flow designs. The two-branch and middle channel fragmented design shows better temperature uniformity over other designs while the three-branch fragmented designs exhibited better hydrodynamic performance.

MCPs could be used as an indirect liquid cooling method for battery thermal management of pouch and prismatic cells. Coupling the modified cold plates with a battery module and investigating the effect of different battery parameters and environmental effects in a transient state are the prospects for further research.

The study involves several aspects of evaluation for a conclusive decision on optimum channel design by analysing the performance plot between the temperature uniformity index, average base temperature and overall thermal performance. The new fragmented channels are designed in a way to facilitate the fluid towards the outlet in the minimum possible path thereby reducing the pressure drop, also maximizing the heat transfer and temperature uniformity from the substrate due to two inlets and a reversed-flow pattern. Simplified minichannel designs are proposed in this study for practical deployment and ease of manufacturability.

This paper aims to emphasize on studying various geometrical modification performed in wavy and raccoon microchannel by manipulating parameters, i.e. waviness (γ), expansion factor (α), wall to fluid thermal conductivity ratio (k_sf), substrate thickness to channel height ratio (d_sf) and Reynolds number (Re) for obtaining optimum parameter(s) that leads to higher heat dissipation rate.

A three-dimensional solid-fluid conjugate heat transfer numerical model is designed to capture flow characteristics and heat transfer in single-phase laminar flow microchannels. The governing equations are solved using finite volume method.

The results are presented in terms of average base temperature, average Nusselt number, pressure drop, dimensionless local heat flux, dimensionless wall and bulk fluid temperature, local Nusselt number and performance factor including axial conduction number. Heat dissipation rate with raccoon microchannel configuration is found to be higher compared to straight and wavy microchannel. With waviness of γ = 0.167, and 0.267 in wavy and raccoon microchannel, respectively, performance factor attains maximum value compared to other waviness for all values of Reynolds number. It is also found that the effect of axial wall conduction in wavy and raccoon microchannel is negligible. Additionally, thermal performance of wavy and raccoon microchannel is compared with straight microchannel.

In recent past years, much complex design of microchannel has been proposed for heat transfer enhancement, but the feasibility of available manufacturing techniques to fabricate complex geometries is still questionable. However, fabrication of wavy and raccoon microchannel is easy, and their heat dissipation capability is higher.

This makes the difference in wall and bulk fluid temperature smaller. Thus, present work highlighted the dominance of axial wall conduction on thermal and hydrodynamic performance of wavy and raccoon microchannel under conjugate heat transfer situation.