Thermal and hydraulic performance enhancement of microchannel heat sinks utilizing porous substrates

A comprehensive study utilizing porous substrates in microchannel heat sinks (MCHS) is presented in this work to find an optimized design which improves thermal and hydraulic performance of conventional microchannels. Three dimensional models of MCHS with different solid and porous fin thicknesses have been analyzed in this work. A parametric optimization has been done on the thickness of the solid and porous fin, and various performance parameters are evaluated for different MCHSs. The results are compared with the conventional heat sinks and demonstrate that for every combination set of MCHS geometrical parameters, there is an optimized porous design which can improve the thermal and hydraulic performance at the same time, or at least improving one while keeping the other at the same level as a conventional heat sink. This improvement is examined for different ranges of Reynolds numbers and pumping powers. Optimization process has been applied for porous MCHSs with various heat sink material and porosities. The superior effect of optimized porous design has been observed in all cases. (C) 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.