Numerical Modelling of Heat Transfer in Rectangular Microchannels

The paper presents both three and two-dimensional numerical analysis of convective heat transfer in microchannels. The three-dimensional geometry of the microchannel heat sink followed the details of the experimental facility used during a previous research step. The heat sink consisted of a very high aspect ratio rectangular microchannel. Two channel heights, namely 1mm and 0.3mm (0.1mm), were used for 3D (2D) numerical model respectively. Water was employed as the cooling liquid. The Reynolds number ranged from 200 to 3000. In the paper, the thermal entrance effect is analyzed in terms of heat transfer efficiency. Finally, the comparison between measured and computed heat flux and temperature fields is presented. Contrary to the experimental work, the numerical analysis did not reveal any significant scale effect in heat transfer in microchannel heat sink up to the smallest size considered (0.1 mm).