Study on the Flow and Heat Transfer Characteristics of Sinusoidal Half-Corrugated Microchannels

Authors：Wang, Xiaowu^*; Wan, Zhenping; Lin, Qinghong; Tang, Yong

Source：Journal of Thermophysics and Heat Transfer, 2020, 34(2): 314-321.

DOI：10.2514/1.T5801

• BOILING INSTABILITY
• PRESSURE-DROP
• ENHANCEMENT
• CHANNELS
• WATER

Driven by the need for heat dissipation in electronic equipment, flow boiling in structured microchannels has received increasing interest. Structured microchannels can improve heat transfer performance but also produce higher pressure drop owing to the structured heat transfer surface. In this study, the effects of inlet temperature and the structure parameter, such as wave amplitude and wavelength, on flow boiling heat transfer of half sinusoidal corrugated copper microchannels are investigated experimentally at a mass flux of 400 kg.s-1.m-2. The heat transfer of the plain bottom microchannels can be divided into three stages. The heat transfer of the half-corrugated microchannels can be divided into four stages. Half-corrugated microchannels always show larger effective heat fluxes and smaller pressure drop than the plain bottom microchannels. Flow boiling instabilities occur when the half-corrugated microchannels and the plain bottom microchannels enter the boiling heat transfer stage, but the later show critical heat flux inception soon. Influenced by the flow boiling instabilities, the effective heat fluxes of all the half-corrugated microchannels at the inlet temperature of 30 degrees C are larger than those at the inlet temperature of 90 degrees C. The geometric structures have joint actions on the heat transfer performance.