Experimental and Numerical Investigation for Hydrothermal Performance of the Jet Impingement Microchannel Heat Sink

Abstract

This study experimentally investigated the hydrothermal and overall performance of the microchannel heat sink incorporating the jet impingement technique. Later on, a numerical model is developed using the finite volume-based tool FLUENT of the commercial software Ansys and validated with the experimental results. Improvement in the cooling performance for the fluid impinging normal to the surface is observed in comparison to the parallel flow of fluid in the microchannel. Similarly, variation in the jet impingement microchannel heat sink performance for the single-jet and multi-jet is also explored. Hydraulic and thermal characteristic parameters such as pressure drop, average heat transfer coefficient, maximum wall temperature, and figure of merit are evaluated for the analysis. Multi-jet impingement flow exhibited superior heat transfer with respect to the parallel flow and single impingement flow but offered remarkably higher pressure drop. However, the Figure of Merit value is superior for the multi-jet impingement flow technique with 5 number of jet nozzles. In addition, increasing as well as decreasing the number of jets from 5 jet nozzles for the same mass flow rate diminishes the overall performance of the jet impingement microchannel heat sink.