Performance improvement and thermodynamic assessment of microchannel heat sink with different types of ribs and cones

The present study aims to investigate the performance of microchannel heat sink via numerical simulations, based on the first and second law of thermodynamics. The heat transfer and flow characteristics of rectangular microchannel heat sinks have been improved by adding six different types of surface enhancers. The cross-sections include rectangular, triangular, and hexagonal-shaped ribs and cones. The cones have been created from the same cross-sections of ribs by drafting them at an angle of 45° orthogonal to the base, which is expected to decrease the pressure drop, dramatically. The performance of ribs and cones has been evaluated using different parameters such as friction factor, wall shear stress, entropy generation rate, augmentation entropy generation number, thermal resistance, and transport efficiency of thermal energy. The results of the present study revealed that the novel effect of coning at an angle of 45° reduces frictional losses (Maximum pressure drop reduced is 85%), however; a compromise on thermal behavior has been shown (Maximum Nusselt number reduced is 25%). Similarly, the application of coning has caused a significant reduction in wall shear stress and friction factor which can lead to reducing the pumping power requirements. Moreover, triangular ribs have more ability to transfer thermal energy than rectangular and hexagonal ribs. Furthermore, it has been examined in the present study that the trend of total entropy generation rate for triangular ribs decreases up to Re = 400 and then increases onwards which means that thermal losses are more significant than frictional losses at lower Reynolds number. However, frictional losses dominate over thermal losses at higher Reynolds numbers, where vortex generation takes place, especially in triangular ribs.