Investigation of nanofluids heat transfer in a ribbed microchannel heat sink using single-phase and multiphase CFD models

In this paper, laminar forced convective heat transfer of water/alumina nanofluids in a straight microchannel is studied numerically using CFD modeling. In the first part, single-phase and two-phase mixture models have been used for prediction of hydrodynamics and heat transfer parameters of nanofluids in a simple microchannel heat sink. The CFD predictions were compared to the experimental data and it was concluded that the two-phase approach gives better predictions compared to the single-phase model. The effects of ribs turbulators on the fluid flow and heat transfer performance of microchannel were investigated in the second part. The effects of geometrical characteristics of the ribs were studied, and the results showed that the Nusselt number and friction coefficient of nanofluids in the ribbed microchannel are higher than those of simple microchannel, and this enhancement increased with increasing the width of the ribs. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.