A STUDY OF HEAT TRANSFER IN MICRO-CHANNEL HEAT

SINKS

Project Report

Submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the course of

Convective Heat Transfer (ME-274)

By
Pabitra Badhuk (13281)

Department of Mechanical Engineering,

Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore - 560012
 INDEX

List of Variables for Analytic modelling

Problem Statement

Simplifying assumptions

Analysis

Solution

Performance Optimisation

Similarity solution

Numerical modelling parameter details

Discussion of numerical results

Comparison with analytical modelling

References
 A. List of Variables for Analytic modelling

a Length defined in (9)

b A characteristic length (15)
C Specific heat per unit volume of fluid
H Height of fin
H* Dimensionless Height, (24)
J Heat current in fin (in z direction)
j Heat current into a channel (in x direction)
Kc Thermal conductivity of fluid
Kf Thermal conductivity of fin
L Length of chip and channels
P Pressure drop in channel
Q Rate of heat production per unit area of chip
T Temperature in a fin
v P w2c /12 L is the average velocity of fluid flow
wc Width of channel
wf Width of fin
w Width of chip
Ratio of fin thickness to parameter b, (20)
Decay length of temperature in a fin, (10)
Viscosity of liquid
Average temperature in the fluid

B. Problem Statement

Heat transfer in electronic equipments cooling has caught the interest of heat transfer community for
a considerable time now. It is understood that, capacity of a computing system is limited by the
capacity of its cooling system. As electronic equipments become smaller, cooling load per unit area
keeps on increasing. For small systems like mobiles, natural convection may be sufficient to remove
the heat generated in operation. However, in a bigger system it is a must to have a forced convection
cooling system. Heat sink is an attractive configuration which serves this purpose. If in a heat sink,
liquid undergoes phase change, it is called a heat pipe and is capable of transferring more heat than
single phase heat removal systems. However, in the present work, I have limited myself to an
analysis of single phase heat removal mechanism.
Consider the configuration shown in figure 1. Heat Q per unit area is generated uniformly in a
substrate (electronic chip) which is attached to the
bottom face of the system. The system has fins of
height H and thickness wf attached to it with channels
of width wc between them. An incompressible fluid is
being driven through the channel by a pressure
difference of P across the channel. The concept of here
is that, heat generated in the substrate will first get into
the fins by conduction and then liquid flowing through
the channel will carry the heat away. The purpose of
the fin is to provide a large contact area between the
solid and the fluid, through which heat transfer can
take place. Silicon can be a good candidate as the fin Figure 1: Schematic of the geometry
material because of its good thermal conductivity and under consideration

liquid water can serve as the liquid flowing through the channel, because of waters very high heat
capacity.

C. Simplifying Assumptions

The problem being considered involves simultaneous temperature changes in solid and fluid.
Temperature change in the solid effects temperature profile in the fluid and vice versa. Such is a
problem is called conjugate heat transfer problem. It is very difficult to solve for temperature field
analytically in such a case, unless we make certain simplifying assumptions. The assumptions taken
to get an analytical solution for the problem is discussed below.
1. Referring to the figure 1, heat is assumed to be flowing from the chip to the silicon heat-
sink in the z direction. As heat gets conducted through the heat-sink in the z direction,
heat energy is continuously getting lost to water from the heat-sink by thermal resistance
of water in the x direction. Then, finally water takes the heat away by convection in the
y direction.
2. While considering heat transfer from the heat-sink to the water, the effect of thermal
resistance provided by silicon has been neglected in the analysis. As, thermal conductivity
of silicon is about 250 times that of water, it is expected that temperature will be constant
in the silicon across the x-direction.
 3. Principle heat flow in the y direction is convective. Transport of heat by convection
produces an effective thermal conductivity of CvL, which is 100 to 1000 times the thermal
conductivity of silicon. On this basis heat current in the silicon in the y direction has
been neglected.
4. Heat conduction through water in the z direction has been neglected because of strong
parallel heat current in the z direction through the silicon fins. Heat conduction in water
in the y direction is also neglected, because magnitude of conduction will be negligible
as compared to convective flow.
5. The flow is assumed to be laminar, fully developed.
6. Heat transfer from the heat-sink to the channel from the bottom of the fins has been
neglected, because area of the side walls is far greater than the area at the bottom.
7. For solution of the heat conduction problem, rectangular channels of infinite depth have
been used. In the fully developed regime this corresponds to a Nusselt number of 140/17.
8. All fluid properties have been taken to be independent of temperature. However, this is not
a very good assumption. As, under extreme circumstances viscosity of water can change
by more than a hundred percent from entry to exit of the channel. This assumption will be
the main source of error, in our analytical formulation.

D. Analysis

Under the framework of the above simplifying assumptions, Heat current through the heat-sink fins is
given by,
T ( y ,z)
J =K f
z
(1)
Notice that even though temperature in the fins is a function of both y and z, heat current only in
the z direction has been taken into consideration in lieu of assumption 3.
The divergence of J equals the flow of heat from the fins into the liquid. JX+dX

dJ
wf =2 j( y , z)
dz
(2)
The rationale behind the above expression is explained in wf
j(y,z) j(y,z)
the adjacent figure. In figure a projection of the fin is taken
in the x-z plane. The heat balance in the figure gives us the Z

governing equation for net heat current entering the

JX X
channel. This heat current will increase the temperature of the fluid. j is driven
by the temperature difference between the fin and the liquid.
 j ( y , z )=Nu K c [ T ( y , z ) ( y , z ) ] /2 wc
(3)
Here, the value of Nusselt number for channels of infinite depth under constant heat flux condition
can be used for calculating numerical results. Finally, temperature in the fluid is governed by j itself
on the other hand.
( y , z )
w c Cv =2 j( y , z)
y
(4) A closer look at the set of governing equations reveals that, the system of equation is second order
in T and first order in , so we will need three boundary conditions to form a well-posed
problem. They are given by,
J ( z =0 )=Q( wc +w f )/w f (5)
J ( z =H )=0
(6)
( 0, z )=0
(7)
Equation (5) tells us that we are assuming all the heat flux that is generate in the chip, is entering the
heat-sink through the fins and not through into the channel through the bottom face of the channel.
This is our assumption 6. Top surface of the fins has been assumed adiabatic and Temperature
entering the fluid has been taken zero as a reference.
E. Solution
Combine (2) and (4) to obtain,

wf ( dJdz )=w Cv ( yy , z)
c

Now from equation (1),

d2T d
wf Kf 2
=w c Cv
dz dy
Notice that temperature gradient in y direction in the fins and in z direction in the liquid has been
neglected compared to their counterparts because of the assumptions stated in (3) and (4). Now, in
order to simplify the problem a linear functional relationship between and y has been
assumed.
d ( y ) (0) ( y)
=
dy y0 y