Monem Alyaser, VP Business Development at Asetek was invited to present on “Optimization of Liquid Cooled Microchannels” at the ASME International Mechanical Engineering Congress and Exposition held November 11th - 15th 2007 in Seattle, WA, USA.
To get a copy of the final paper click hereAbstract
Liquid cooled microchannels are commonly used to achieve higher heat transfer rates than larger scale heat exchanger structures. However flow impedance of smaller scale structures such as microchannels is significantly higher. In the simplest terms, the thermal resistance of liquid cooled microchannels is inversely proportional to the product of the heat transfer coefficient on the channel walls and the total surface area. Increasing the total available surface area by increasing the number of microchannels results in the reduction of the channel width on a fixed size coldplate and increases the flow impedance of the coldplate. In addition, increasing surface area by increasing channel height adversely affects the fin efficiency. Ultimately, there exists an optimal coldplate configuration to achieve the highest heat transfer rates with the lowest flow impedance.
In the present study, CFD simulations were used to determine the minimum thermal resistance of liquid cooled microchannels. Design parameters including microchannel gap, fin thickness, channel height, and coldplate base thickness were investigated. The minimum thermal resistance for a 30 mm x 30 mm x 7 mm coldplate was found to be 0.042 °C/W. Other conclusions including optimal microchannel configurations are presented.
