An experimental investigation of forced convective cooling performance of a microchannel heat sink with Al2O3/water nanofluid

C. J. Ho, L. C. Wei, Z. W. Li

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

399 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Experiments were conducted to investigate forced convective cooling performance of a copper microchannel heat sink with Al2O3/water nanofluid as the coolant. The microchannel heat sink fabricated consists of 25 parallel rectangular microchannels of length 50 mm with a cross-sectional area of 283 μm in width by 800 μm in height for each microchannel. Hydraulic and thermal performances of the nanofluid-cooled microchannel heat sink have been assessed from the results obtained for the friction factor, the pumping power, the averaged heat transfer coefficient, the thermal resistance, and the maximum wall temperature, with the Reynolds number ranging from 226 to 1676. Results show that the nanofluid-cooled heat sink outperforms the water-cooled one, having significantly higher average heat transfer coefficient and thereby markedly lower thermal resistance and wall temperature at high pumping power, in particular. Despite the marked increase in dynamic viscosity due to dispersing the alumina nanoparticles in water, the friction factor for the nanofluid-cooled heat sink was found slightly increased only.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)96-103
Number of pages8
JournalApplied Thermal Engineering
Volume30
Issue number2-3
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2010 Feb

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • Energy Engineering and Power Technology
  • Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

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