Numerical Investigation of Heat Transfer and Fluid Flow Characteristics in Circular Wavy Microchannels with Sidewall Rib

Purpose: Numerical investigation was carried out to study the hydro-thermal characteristics in circular wavy microchannels (CWMCs) with sidewall rib. Thermal resistance and pressure drop penalty were compared with sinusoidal wavy microchannels (SWMCs) design. Parametric study on sidewall rib was also carried to minimize the pressure drop penalty and to achieve lower thermal resistance. Introducing sidewall rib in the CWMCs leads to the formation of more Deans vortices. This leads to an effective fluid mixing and augments the convective heat transfer. Design methodology/approach: A computational solid domain was created in SOLIDWORKS and the fluid domain was produced by circular arc profile for the entire length of heat sink. 3-D numerical investigation was carried out using ANSYS FLUENT software. Created computational domain was imported into ANSYS WORKBENCH. Meshing was executed in ANSYS mesh module. The computational domains were meshed using hexahedral elements adopting match control on both sides of microchannel (MC). The numerical investigation was carried out in the Re range from 100 to 300 with constant heat flux (50 W/cm2) applied at the bottom of the channel. Heat transfer and fluid flow characteristics were explained with velocity vectors, velocity contours and temperature contours. Findings: From numerical studies, it is concluded that CWMC with sidewall rib width (0.15 mm) leads to 33.6 % lower thermal resistance than SWMC with pressure drop penalty. Originality/Value: Present study is useful to identify the optimum deign to augment the heat dissipation performance of microchannel heat sink.