Thermal and hydraulic performance analysis of a heat sink with corrugated channels and nanofluids

Cooling of electronic devices is one of the critical challenges that the electronics industry is facing towards sustainable development. Aiming at lowering the surface temperature of the heat sink to limit thermally induced deformations, corrugated channels and nanofluids are employed to improve the thermal and hydraulic performances of a heat sink. Three-dimensional simulations based on the finite-volume approach are carried out to study conjugated heat transfer in the heat sink. Water-based nanofluids containing Al₂O₃ nanoparticles with two different particle sizes (29 nm and 40 nm) and volume fractions less than 4% are employed as the coolant, and their influence on the thermal and hydraulic performance of the heat sink is compared with the base fluid (i.e. water). An empirical model is utilised to approximate the effective transport properties of the nanofluids. Employing corrugated channels instead of straight channels in the heat sink results in an enhancement of 24–36% in the heat transfer performance at the cost of 20–31% increase in the required pumping power leading to an enhancement of 16–24% in the overall performance of the heat sink. Additionally, the numerical predictions indicate that the overall performance of the proposed heat sink design with corrugated channels and water–Al₂O₃ nanofluids is 22–40% higher than that of the water-cooled heat sink with straight channels. It is demonstrated that the overall performance of the heat sink cooled with water–Al₂O₃ nanofluids increases with reducing the average nanoparticle size. Additionally, the maximum temperature rise in the heat sinks is determined for different thermal loads.