The Effect of Geometric Parameters on Flow and Heat Transfer Characteristics of a Double-Layer Microchannel Heat Sink for High-Power Diode Laser

Yiwei Gao; Junchao Wang; Mingxuan Cao; Luhao Zang; Hao Liu; Matthew M F Yuen; Xiaolei Bai; Ying Wang

doi:10.3390/mi13122072

The Effect of Geometric Parameters on Flow and Heat Transfer Characteristics of a Double-Layer Microchannel Heat Sink for High-Power Diode Laser

Micromachines (Basel). 2022 Nov 25;13(12):2072. doi: 10.3390/mi13122072.

Authors

Yiwei Gao¹, Junchao Wang¹, Mingxuan Cao¹, Luhao Zang¹, Hao Liu², Matthew M F Yuen³, Xiaolei Bai⁴, Ying Wang¹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Intelligent Manufacturing, Wuyi University, Jiangmen 529020, China.
² Key & Core Technology Innovation Institute of The Greater Bay Area, Guangzhou 510535, China.
³ Department of Mechanical Engineering, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Hong Kong 999077, China.
⁴ School of Physical Science and Technology, Inner Mongolia University, Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, Hohhot 010021, China.

Abstract

The effect of the geometric parameters on the flow and heat transfer characteristics of a double-layer U-shape microchannel heat sink (DL-MCHS) for a high-power diode laser was investigated in this work. FLUENT 19.2 based on the finite volume method was employed to analyze the flow and heat transfer performance of DL-MCHS. A single variable approach was used to fully research the impact of different parameters (the number of channels, the channel cross-sectional shape, and the aspect ratio) on the temperature distribution, pressure drop, and thermal resistance of the DL-MCHS. The rectangular DL-MCHS heat transfer performance and pressure drop significantly increased with the rise in the channel's aspect ratio due to there being a larger wet perimeter and convective heat transfer area. By comparing the thermal resistance of the DL-MCHS at the same power consumption, it was found that the rectangular DL-MCHS with an aspect ratio in the range of 5.1180-6.389 had the best overall performance. With the same cross-sectional area and hydraulic diameter (A_C = 0.36 mm, D_h = 0.417 mm), the thermal resistance of the trapezoidal microchannel heat sink was 32.14% and 42.42% lower than that of the triangular and rectangular ones, respectively, under the condition that the pumping power (W_pp) was 0.2 W. Additionally, the thermal resistance was reduced with the increment of the number of channels inside the DL-MCHS, but this would induce an increased pressure drop. Thus, the channel number has an optimal range, which is between 50 and 80 for the heat sinks in this study. Our study served as a simulation foundation for the semiconductor laser double-layer U-shaped MCHS optimization method using geometric parameters.

Keywords: double-layer U-shaped microchannel heat sink; heat transfer; pressure drop; pumping power; thermal resistance.

Grants and funding

This work was supported by the Guangdong Province Key Field R&D Program Project (2020B090922004), the Wuyi University Scientific Research Foundation (AL2018011, 2019AL009, and 2018TP013), the Jiangmen City Fundamental and Applied Fundamental Research Fund (2020030102130005402), and the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Joint Research and Development Fund of Wuyi University (2019WGALH22), the Wuyi University Joint Training Postgraduate Demonstration Base Fund (503170060251), and the Key Technology Research projects in Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region (2021GG0274).