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Enhancement of thermal transport performance in microscale spiral-channel cooling cores

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Abstract

In this research, a multilayer spiral microchannel heat exchanger was employed as a cooling core, and the effects of altering the number of parallel layers on the thermal transport performance were studied. Physical devices and numerical models via FLUENT with between two and twenty layers were tested. Additional layers were shown to improve the thermal transport efficiency, with a minimal impact on required pumping power, up to a maximum of 16 layers. Taking into consideration the fabrication cost and manufacturing time, the 10-layer device was selected as the optimal cooling core, with an observed thermal performance saturation occurring around Re = 500, De = 150. The combination of up to six parallel cooling cores form a novel multicore heat exchanger system, and thus the effect of varying the number of cores was also analysed, finding a consistent improvement with additional cores. In this way, the system can be tuned for any application by varying the number of cores employed, up to a maximum of 330 W of cooling with six. Different materials were also compared, namely PDMS, PMMA and copper. Under low flow rate conditions (roughly Re ≤ 200, De ≤ 60), polymer cooling cores were found to achieve comparable or even superior heat transfer to copper cores. Whilst some differences in readings were noted between the numerical and laboratory results, likely due to the fabrication processes, the simple model outlined here can be used to predict the trends of cooling cores, permitting further development of the microfluidic design.

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Abbreviations

\(A\) :

Heat transfer area (mm2)

\(C\) :

Radius of curvature of the channel (mm)

\({C}_{p}\) :

Specific heat capacity of the fluid (J/kg·K)

De :

Dean number

\({D}_{H}\) :

Hydraulic diameter (characteristic length, mm)

f :

Darcy friction factor

\(k\) :

Thermal conductivity of the fluid (W/m·K)

\(L\) :

Total channel length (mm)

\(\dot{m}\) :

Mass flow rate of the fluid (kg/s)

N :

Number of measurements

Nu :

Nusselt number

\(\overline{Nu }\) :

Average Nusselt Number

\(\Delta P\) :

Pressure drop across the channel (Pa)

Q :

Heat transfer rate (W)

\({Q}_{c}\) :

Cold loop heat transfer rate (W)

\({Q}_{h}\) :

Hot loop heat transfer rate (W)

\({Q}_{m}\) :

Average heat transfer rate (W)

Re :

Reynolds Number

\({T}_{c}\) :

Cold loop flow temperature (K)

\({T}_{f}\) :

Bulk fluid flow temperature (K)

\({T}_{h}\) :

Hot loop flow temperature (K)

\({T}_{w}\) :

Wall temperature (K)

TPF :

Thermal performance factor

\(v\) :

Flow velocity (m/s)

\({x}^{i}\) :

Sample value from data

\(\overline{x }\) :

Mean of values from data

\(\rho\) :

Density of the fluid (kg/m3)

\(\sigma\) :

Standard deviation

\(\mu\) :

Dynamic viscosity of the fluid (Pa·s)

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Funding

This work was supported by the Singapore National Research Foundation under its Environmental & Water Technologies Strategic Research Programme administered by the Environment & Water Industry Programme Office (EWI) of the Public Utilities Board, Singapore.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Mechanical Engineering, National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore

    Samuel D. Marshall, Hian Hian See, Niven Singh Virik, Poh Seng Lee, Rerngchai Arayanarakool & Peter C. Y. Chen

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  1. Samuel D. Marshall
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  2. Hian Hian See
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  3. Niven Singh Virik
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  4. Poh Seng Lee
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  5. Rerngchai Arayanarakool
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  6. Peter C. Y. Chen
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Correspondence to Peter C. Y. Chen.

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Marshall, S.D., See, H.H., Virik, N.S. et al. Enhancement of thermal transport performance in microscale spiral-channel cooling cores. Heat Mass Transfer 59, 409–426 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00231-022-03260-9

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