Numerical Study on the Fluid Flow and Heat Transfer Characteristics of Al2O3-Water Nanofluids in Microchannels of Different Aspect Ratio

The study of the influence of the nanoparticle volume fraction and aspect ratio of microchannels on the fluid flow and heat transfer characteristics of nanofluids in microchannels is important in the optimal design of heat dissipation systems with high heat flux. In this work, the computational fluid dynamics method was adopted to simulate the flow and heat transfer characteristics of two types of water-Al2O3 nanofluids with two different volume fractions and five types of microchannel heat sinks with different aspect ratios. Results showed that increasing the nanoparticle volume fraction reduced the average temperature of the heat transfer interface and thereby improved the heat transfer capacity of the nanofluids. Meanwhile, the increase of the nanoparticle volume fraction led to a considerable increase in the pumping power of the system. Increasing the aspect ratio of the microchannel effectively improved the heat transfer capacity of the heat sink. Moreover, increasing the aspect ratio effectively reduced the average temperature of the heating surface of the heat sink without significantly increasing the flow resistance loss. When the aspect ratio exceeded 30, the heat transfer coefficient did not increase with the increase of the aspect ratio. The results of this work may offer guiding significance for the optimal design of high heat flux microchannel heat sinks.

Automated summary

Adjusting the nanoparticle volume fraction and aspect ratio of microchannels has a significant impact on improving the heat transfer capacity of nanofluids, but may increase the pumping power of the system; increasing the aspect ratio of microchannels effectively enhances the heat transfer capacity of heat sinks, but the heat transfer coefficient does not continue to increase beyond a certain value.