NUMERICAL STUDY OF THE EFFECT OF AREA OF MANIFOLD AND INLET/OUTLET FLOW ARRANGEMENT 0N FLOW DISTRIBUTION IN PARALLEL RECTANGULAR MICROCHANNEL COOLING SYSTEM
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.11113/jt.v79.11901Keywords:
Computational fluid dynamics (CFD), single phase, parallel microchannels, flow maldistribution, manifoldsAbstract
Parallel microchannels have been widely used in cooling of compact electronic equipment due to large contact area with liquid and availability of large mass of fluid to carry away heat. However, understanding of flow distribution for microchannel parallel system is still unclear and there still lack of studies give a clear pictures to understand the complex flow features which cause the flow maldistribution. Generally, the geometrical structure of the manifold and micro channels play an important role in flow distribution between micro channels, which might affects the heat and mass transfer efficiency, even the performance of micro exchangers. A practical design of exchanger basically involves the selection of an optimized solution, keeping an optimal balance between gain in heat transfer and pressure drop penalty. A parallel microchannels configurations consisting inlet and outlet rectangular manifold were simulated to study flow distribution among the channels were investigated numerically by using Ansys Fluent 14.5. The numerical results was validated using existing experimental data and showed a similar trend with values 1% higher than experimental data. The influence of inlet/outlet manifold area and inlet/outlet arrangement on flow distribution in channels were carried out in this study. Based on the predicted flow non-uniformity value, ðœ™, Z- type flow arrangement exhibits higher value of ðœ™, which is 8%, followed by U-type, 2.6% and the I-type, 2.49%. Thus, a better uniformity of velocity and temperature distributions can be achieved in I-shape flow arrangement. The behavior of the flow distributions inside channels is due to the vortices that occurred at manifold. Besides comparing the pressure drop for case 1(D1) and case 2(D2), it is worth to mention that, as the area of inlet and outlet manifold decrease by 50%, the pressure drop is increasing about 5%. However, the inlet/outlet area of manifold on velocity and fluid temperature distributions was insignificant.
References
S. Kandlikar, Z. Lu, W. Domigan, A. White, M. Benedict. 2009. Measurement of Flow Maldistribution in Parallel Channels and Its Application to Ex-Situ and In-Situ Experiment’s in PEMFC Water Management Studies. Int. J. Heat and Mass Transfer. 52: 1741-1752.
Zhai, Y., Xia, G., Li, Z. and Wang, H. 2017. Experimental Investigation and Empirical Correlations of Single and Laminar Convective Heat Transfer in Microchannel Heat Sinks. Experimental Thermal and Fluid Science. 83: 207-214.
Pistoresi, C., Fan, Y. and Luo, L. 2015. Numerical Study on the Improvement of Flow Distribution Uniformity among Parallel Mini-channels. Chemical Engineering and Processing: Process Intensification. 95: 63-71.
O. Tonomura, S. Tanaka, M. Noda, M. Kano, S. Hasebe, I. Hashimoto. 2004. CFD-based Optimal Design of Manifold in Plate-fin Microdevices. Chem. Eng. J. 101: 397-402.
S. Balaji, S. Lakshminarayanan. 2006. Improved Design of Microchannel Plate Geometry for Uniform Flow Distribution. The Canadian J. of Chem. Eng. 84: 715-721.
M. Pan, X. Shao, L. Liang. 2013. Analysis of Velocity Uniformity in a Single Microchannel Plate with Rectangular Manifolds at Different Entrance Velocities. Chem. Eng. Technol. 36(6): 1067-1074.
Jones, B. J., Lee, P.-S. and Garimella, S. V. 2008. Infrared Micro-particle Velocity Measurements and Predictions of Flow Distribution in Microchannel Heat Sink. International Journal of Heat and Mass. 51: 1877-1887.
Chein, R. and Chen, J. 2009. Numerical Study of Inlet/Outlet Arrangement Effect on Microchannel Heat Sink Performance. International Journal of Thermal Sciences. 48: 1627-1638.
Camilleri, R., Howey, D. and McCulloch, M. 2015. Predicting the Flow Distribution in Compact Parallel Flow Heat Exchangers. Applied Thermal Engineering. 90: 551-558.
Anbumeenakshi, C. and Thansekhar, M. R. 2016. Experimental Investigation of Header Shape and Inlet Configuration on Flow Maldistribution in Microchannel. Experimental Thermal and Fluid Science. 75: 156-161
Sahar, A. M., Özdemir, M. R., Fayyadh, E. M., Wissink, J., Mahmoud, M. M. and Karayiannis, T. G. 2016. Single Phase Flow Pressure Drop and Heat Transfer in Rectangular Metallic Microchannels. Applied Thermal Engineering. 93: 1324-1336.
Baek, S., Lee, C. and Jeong, S. 2014. Effect of Flow Maldistribution and Axial Conduction on Compact Microchannel Heat Exchanger. Cryogenics. 60: 49-61.
A. G. Fedorov, R. Viskanta. 2000. Three-dimensional Conjugate Heat Transfer in the Microchannel Heat Sink for Electronic Packaging. Int. J. Heat and Mass Transfer. 43: 399-415.
W. Qu, I. Mudawar. 2002. Experimental and Numerical Study of Pressure Drop and Heat Transfer in a Single-phase Microchannel Heat Sink. Int. J. Heat and Mass Transfer. 45: 2549-2565.
Fayyadh, E. M., Mahmoud, M. M., Sefiane, K. and Karayiannis, T. G. 2017. Flow Boiling Heat Transfer of R134a in Multi Microchannels. International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer. 110: 422-436.
Siva V, M., Pattamatta, A. and Das, S. K. 2013. Investigation on Flow Maldistribution in Parallel Microchannel System for Intergrated Microelectronic Device Cooling. IEEE Transactions on Components, Packaging and Manufacturing Technology. 4(3): 2156-3950.
Kumaran, R. M., Kumaraguruparan, G. and Sornakumar, T. 2013. Experimental and Numerical Studies of Header Design and Inlet/Outlet Configurations on Flow Mal-Distribution in Parallel Micro-Channels. Applied Thermal Engineering. 58(1): 205-216.
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright of articles that appear in Jurnal Teknologi belongs exclusively to Penerbit Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (Penerbit UTM Press). This copyright covers the rights to reproduce the article, including reprints, electronic reproductions, or any other reproductions of similar nature.
