Lattice Boltzmann simulation of conjugate forced convection in a channel heat sink with surface-mounted blocks
The study of the conjugate forced convection in a channel has many practical applications and has attracted attention from researchers, although the conjugate heat transfer in this configuration is usually ignored. In this paper, the conjugate forced convection heat transfer in a channel heat sink with surface-mounted blocks is numerically studied with the lattice Boltzmann method. The effects of Reynolds numbers and geometrical parameters of the blocks in different aspect ratios on the flow field and temperature distribution for various thermal conductivity ratio of solid wall to the fluid are analyzed. The results reveal that the distributions of the vortices and streamlines in the channel heat sink largely depend on the geometric parameters, and the increase of the distance between two mounted blocks tends to cause the pressure drop to increase and the average Nusselt number decreases. In addition, we found that a modification of the thermal conductivity ratio of solid to fluid has little effect on the pressure drop, whereas the heat transfer performance becomes much better.