Applied Thermal Engineering 31 (2011) 1293e1304

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Applied Thermal Engineering

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/apthermeng

Numerical investigation of laminar heat transfer performance of various cooling

channel designs
Jundika C. Kurnia a, Agus P. Sasmito a, b, *, Arun S. Mujumdar a, b
a
Department of Mechanical Engineering, National University of Singapore, 9 Engineering Drive 1, Singapore 117576, Singapore
b
Mineral, Metal and Material Technology Centre, National University of Singapore, 9 Engineering Drive 1, Singapore 117576, Singapore

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: This study addresses the heat transfer performance of various cooling channel designs e.g., parallel,
Received 22 October 2010 serpentine, wavy, coiled and novel hybrid channels. The cooling channel is designed to be placed on top
Accepted 23 December 2010 of an electronic chip which dissipates heat at a constant flux. Laminar flow of a Newtonian fluid in
Available online 12 January 2011
a square cross-section channel is investigated using a three-dimensional computational fluid dynamic
approach. Five channels Reynolds number are investigated to quantify the effect of Reynolds number on
Keywords:
the performance of the cooling channel designs. Advantages and limitations of each design are discussed
Coils
in the light of numerical results. Figures of merit, viz. heat transferred per unit pumping power are
Electronic cooling
Heat transfer performance
compared for the wide variety of channels examined.
Mathematical model Ó 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Non-circular tube
Square tube

1. Introduction
In recent years electronic devices have become indispensable
part in every aspect of our daily life. In operating these devices, it is
essential to maintain the temperature of electronic components
below the recommended upper limit level to achieve optimum
performance, maximum efficiency and reliability of the compo-
nents. Inability in maintaining recommended temperature range
will reduce the performance, efficiency and life span of the system
and may even lead to catastrophic system failure [1]. With the rapid
improvement in microprocessors, this problem has become more
serious, not only for the electronic components but also for the
power systems that supply energy to the electronic components. In
attempts to overcome this problem, various cooling strategies have
been proposed and developed [2,3].
Currently, there are five cooling strategies available [2]: (i) liquid
cooling [4,5], (ii) forced convection cooling [6,7], (iii) natural
convection cooling [8,9], (iv) edge cooling [10,11], and (v) phase
change cooling [12,13]. Among these methods, the liquid cooling
systems offer considerably higher heat transfer rates due to the
superior heat dissipation rate offered by a high Prandtl number fluid
such as water. Liquid cooling systems can be generally classified into
* Corresponding author. Department of Mechanical Engineering, National
University of Singapore, 9 Engineering Drive 1, Singapore 117576, Singapore.
Tel.: þ65 65162256.
E-mail address: ap.sasmito@nus.edu.sg (A.P. Sasmito).
two main categories, i.e. direct (immersion) cooling and indirect
cooling [14,15]. In direct cooling, the processor chip is basically
immersed on a coolant chamber. This cooling strategy allows
the on-conductive liquid coolant to make a direct contact with the
processor chip, which results in the elimination of most of the
internal thermal resistance. As a result, it generally offers higher
heat transfer rate compared to indirect cooling. However, the heat
transfer performance of direct cooling depends upon the thermo-
physical properties of the coolant which are sometimes lower than
that of water. Moreover, cost of all liquid coolants is higher than that
of water. In indirect cooling, on the other hand, water can be used as
the coolant since it does not make direct contact with the processor
chip. Instead, it flows inside a microchannel which is attached to or
inserted within the processor chip. As such, the channel walls
behave as a separator which increases the thermal resistance.
Therefore careful considerations are required in designing a cooling
channel which can provide high heat transfer performance.
Numerous studies have been conducted to investigate and
enhance the heat transfer performance of various cooling channels,
e.g. parallel [16e20], serpentine [20e22], tree-shaped [15,23e25],
and wavy [26,27]. Recently, Lee et al. [28,29] proposed use of
oblique fins in cooling channels to enhance heat transfer perfor-
mance. In this case, the flow in the channel is always in the
developing stage. This results in thinner boundary layers and hence
better heat transfer rates. Despite of the wide-ranging studies that
have been conducted on the heat transfer performance of the
cooling channels, none has arrived at a definitive conclusion yet.

1359-4311/$ e see front matter Ó 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.applthermaleng.2010.12.036
1294 J.C. Kurnia et al. / Applied Thermal Engineering 31 (2011) 1293e1304

Nomenclature sstd standard deviation of the temperature

At heat transfer area [m2] Subscripts

cp specific heat [J kg1 K1] cd coiled channel with double serpentine
FoM figure of merit ch cooling channel
k thermal conductivity [W m1 K1] cs coiled channel with serpentine
m_ mass flow rate [kg s1] in inlet
p pressure [Pa] mc microprocessor chip
Ppump pumping power [W] ob parallel channel with oblique fin
Q_ total heat transfer rate [W] oi coiled channel with inner inlet/outlet
Qmc heat flux dissipation [W m2] oo coiled channel with outer inlet/outlet
T temperature [K] out outlet
u velocity [m s1] pa parallel channel
s solid separator
Greek se serpentine channel
r fluid density [kg m3] w water
h efficiency [%] wv parallel wavy channel
m dynamic viscosity [Pa s]

Therefore, there is still room for further improvement of heat ks V2 T ¼ 0 (1)

transfer performance of cooling channels by evaluating some novel
configurations which is the theme of this work. where ks is the heat conductivity of separator and T is the
This paper reports results of numerical modeling of several new temperature.
cooling channel designs, as illustrated in Fig. 1. They are: conven- In the cooling channel, fluid flow and convective heat transfer
tional parallel (Fig. 1a) and serpentine channels (Fig. 1b), wavy are taken into account. The conservation of mass, momentum and
(Fig. 1c) and the recently proposed oblique fin (Fig. 1d) channels, as energy are given by
well as rectangular coils (Fig. 1e) and novel hybrid channels (see
V$ðrw uÞ ¼ 0; (2)
Fig. 1feh) which are proposed for the first time in this study. The aim
of this study is to determine an optimum cooling channel design h  i
that has the highest heat transfer performance. To compare the heat V$ðrw u5uÞ ¼ Vp þ V$ mw Vu þ ðVuÞT ; (3)
transfer performance of different cooling channels, a figure of merit
is defined. Essentially, it is the ratio of heat transferred from the
processor chip to the fluid per unit of required pumping power. rw cp; w u$VT ¼ kw V2 T; (4)
Aside from figure of merit, uniformity of processor chip temperature
where rw is the fluid density, u is the fluid velocity, p is the pressure,
needs to be taken into consideration in determining heat transfer
performance. Five Reynolds numbers and three heat flux conditions
mw is the dynamic viscosity of the fluid, cp,w is the specific heat of
the fluid and kw is thermal conductivity of the fluid.
are simulated to evaluate the cooling rate and the heat transfer
performance of each cooling channel. Note that the results pre-
2.2. Constitutive relations
sented are also relevant to thermal management of Polymer Elec-
trolyte Membrane (PEM) fuel cell stacks and battery stacks as well.
The working fluid considered in this paper is water. Thermo-
physical properties of water were obtained as polynomial functions
2. Mathematical model
of temperature [30]; the water density is defined by

The mathematical model (see Fig. 2) comprises two components, rw ¼ 3:570  103 T 3 þ 1:88T þ 753:2; (5)
viz., the solid separator and cooling channel, which allows for
a conjugate heat transfer between solid separator and cooling fluid. A while the water viscosity is given by
constant heat flux, which represents the heat from electronic
mw ¼ 2:591  105  10T143:2 ;
238:3
component, is prescribed at the bottom of the solid separator. The (6)
heat is transferred through separator by conduction and then it is
taken away by cooling fluid. The solid separator is assumed to have and the thermal conductivity of water is calculated from
isotropic thermal conductivity; whereas the cooling fluid is assumed
to be incompressible laminar Newtonian flow. Furthermore, to ensure kw ¼ 8:354  106 T 2 þ 6:53  103 T  0:5981: (7)
the fidelity of the comparison of heat transfer performance for each
The specific heat of water is considered constant
channel design, the area of the chip is kept constant for all designs and
the total length of each channel design is only differ by value less than cp; w ¼ 4200: (8)
5%. Since this work relates only to laminar flow, a precise numerical
solution is adequate to simulate reality very closely. As stated previously, the heat transfer performance of cooling
channel is discussed in terms of the figure of merit, FoM, which is
2.1. Governing equations defined as

For the solid wall, the mode of heat transfer addresses heat Q_
FoM ¼ ; (9)
conduction, the governing equation is described by Ppump
 J.C. Kurnia et al. / Applied Thermal Engineering 31 (2011) 1293e1304 1295

Fig. 1. Cooling channel designs: (a) parallel; (b) serpentine; (c) wavy; (d) oblique fin; (e) coiled with outer inlet/outlet; (f) coiled with inner inlet/outlet; (g) coiled with serpentine
and (h) coiled with double serpentine.
1296 J.C. Kurnia et al. / Applied Thermal Engineering 31 (2011) 1293e1304

Fig. 2. Computational domain for: (a) parallel; (b) serpentine; (c) wavy; (d) oblique fin; (e) coiled with outer inlet/outlet; (f) coiled with inner inlet/outlet; (g) coiled with serpentine
and (h) coiled with double serpentine designs; top (z > 0) corresponds to flow channel and bottom (z < 0) represents solid separator.

where Ppump is the pumping power required to drive flow through area. As a measure of the uniformity, we compare the standard
the channel and Q_ is the total heat transfer rate, given by deviation of the temperature for each flow design defined by

1 0 11=2
Ppump ¼ _ Dp
m (10) Z
hpump sstd ¼ B
@
1 C
ðT  Tave Þ2 dAt A ; (12)
At
Z At
Q_ ¼ Qmc dAt ; (11)
At where Tave is average temperature of the surface, given by
Z
respectively. Here, hpump is the pump efficiency (assumed to be 1
_ is mass flow rate, Dp is pressure drop in the cooling Tave ¼ TdAt : (13)
70%), m At
channel; Qmc is the heat flux dissipation and At is the heat transfer At
 J.C. Kurnia et al. / Applied Thermal Engineering 31 (2011) 1293e1304 1297

2.3. Boundary conditions Table 1

Base case and operating parameters.

The boundary conditions for the flow inside the channel are Parameter Symbol Value Unit
defined as follows: Inlet mass flow rate (Re 100) m_ in 1.00  104 kg s1
Inlet mass flow rate (Re 250) m_ in 1.00  104 kg s1
 Inlet: At the inlet, we prescribe inlet mass flow rate and inlet Inlet mass flow rate (Re 500) m_ in 5.00  104 kg s1
Inlet mass flow rate (Re 750) m_ in 7.50  104 kg s1
temperature
Inlet mass flow rate (Re 1000) m_ in 1.00  103 kg s1
Outlet pressure Pout 101,325 Pa
_ ¼ m
m _ in ; T ¼ Tin (14) Inlet temperature Tin 25 
C
Thermal conductivity solid separator ks 202.4 W m1 K1
Chip heat flux Qmc 104 W m2
 Outlet: At the outlet, we specify the pressure and streamwise
gradient of the temperature is set to zero; the outlet velocity is
not known a priori but needs to be iterated from the neigh- Equations (1)e(3) together with appropriate boundary condi-
boring computational cells. tions and constitutive relations comprising of five dependent
variables e u, v, w, p, and T e were solved using commercial finite
p ¼ pout ; n$VT ¼ 0: (15) volume solver Fluent 6.3.26. User-defined functions (UDF) were
written in C language to account for temperature-dependence of
 Bottom wall: At the bottom of the solid separator (z ¼ 1  103 the thermo-physical properties of the fluid.
in Fig. 2), we prescribe a constant heat flux which represents The equations were solved with the well-known Semi-Implicit
heat arising from electronic chip Pressure-Linked Equation (SIMPLE) algorithm, first-order upwind
discretization and Algebraic Multi-grid (AMG) method. As an
indication of the computational cost, it is noted that on average,
n$ðks VTÞ ¼ Qmc : (16) around 200e500 iterations are needed for convergence criteria for
all relative residuals of 106; this takes 5e30 min on a workstation
 Flow channel/solid separator interface: At the interface between with a quad-core processor (1.83 GHz) and 4 GB of RAM.
flow channel and solid separator (z ¼ 0 in Fig. 2), we set no slip
condition for velocities; whereas, temperature between solid
4. Results and discussion
and liquid is coupled to allow for conjugate heat transfer
The numerical simulations were carried out for typical condi-
u ¼ 0: (17) tions found in electronic cooling; the base-case conditions together
with the physical parameters are listed in Table 1, while the
 Flow channel walls: At the walls of the channels, we specify no geometry details can be found in Table 2. In the following, eight
slip and adiabatic conditions different channel designs, five different coolant flow rates, and
three different heat flux values are simulated to study the impact of
these factors on thermal management. The Figure of Merit (FoM)
u ¼ 0; n$ðkw VTÞ ¼ 0: (18)
concept was implemented to investigate and compared the cooling
performance per unit pumping power.
 Solid separator walls: At the solid separator side walls, we set
adiabatic conditions
4.1. Effect of channel geometry

n$ðks VTÞ ¼ 0: (19) One of the key factors that determine the cooling performance is
In this paper, the range of mass flow rate represents Reynolds the geometry of the flow field as it is directly linked to the velocity
number w100, 250, 500, 750 and 1000. While the prescribed heat
flux is ranging from 104 W m2, which is typical condition found in Table 2
Geometric parameters.
low heat density electronic equipment or fuel cells, to 5  104 W m2
which represents heat flux from computer chip. Parameter Symbol Value Unit
Chip width wchip 5.10  102 m
3. Numerics Channel width wch 1.00  103 m
Channel height hch 1.00  103 m
Separator height hs 1.00  103 m
The computational domains (see Fig. 2) were created in AutoCAD Oblique fin angle qob 26 

2010; the commercial pre-processor software GAMBIT 2.3.16 was Oblique fin width wob 4.49  104 m
used for meshing, labeling boundary conditions and determines the Oblique fin pitch pob 3.06  103 m
computational domain. Three different amount of mesh  2.5  105, Number of sinusoidal wave nwv 10 e
Amplitude of sinusoidal wave Awv 5.10  104 m
5  105 and 1  106 e were implemented and compared in terms of Total length parallel channel Lpa 1.376 m
local pressure, velocities, and temperatures to ensure a mesh Total length serpentine channel Lse 1.351 m
independent solution. We found that the mesh amount of around Total length parallel wavy channel Lwv 1.486 m
5  105 gives about 1% deviation compared to the mesh size of Total length parallel with oblique fin Lob 1.376 m
channel
1  106; whereas, the results from the mesh size of 2.5  105 deviate
Total length coiled channel with outer Lco 1.428 m
up to 7% as compared to those from the finest one. Therefore, a mesh inlet/outlet
of around 5  105 elements (500  500  200) was sufficient for Total length coiled channel with inner Lci 1.428 m
the numerical investigation purposes: a fine structured mesh near inlet/outlet
the wall to resolve the boundary layer and an increasingly coarser Total length coiled channel with serpentine Lcs 1.428 m
Total length coiled channel with double Lcd 1.428 m
mesh in the middle of the channel in order to reduce the compu- serpentine
tational cost.
1298 J.C. Kurnia et al. / Applied Thermal Engineering 31 (2011) 1293e1304

Fig. 3. Velocity contours and vectors of the cooling channels at z ¼ 5  104 m for (a) parallel; (b) serpentine; (c) wavy; (d) oblique fin; (e) coiled with outer inlet/outlet; (f) coiled
with inner inlet/outlet; (g) coiled with serpentine and (h) coiled with double serpentine for Re w500 and Qchip ¼ 104 W m2.
 J.C. Kurnia et al. / Applied Thermal Engineering 31 (2011) 1293e1304 1299

Fig. 4. Temperature distribution at the surface of cooling channels (z ¼ 0) for (a) parallel; (b) serpentine; (c) wavy; (d) oblique fin; (e) coiled with outer inlet/outlet; (f) coiled with
inner inlet/outlet; (g) coiled with serpentine and (h) coiled with double serpentine for Re w500 and Qchip ¼ 104 W m2.
1300 J.C. Kurnia et al. / Applied Thermal Engineering 31 (2011) 1293e1304

and temperature profiles inside the channel. In general, a higher
flow velocity results in higher convective heat transfer; thus, more
heat from the electronic equipment can be dissipated so as to
maintain a more uniform temperature distribution within allowable
limits. The predicted velocity profiles at the middle of the flow
channel (z ¼ 5  104 m) for eight different channel designs are
shown in Fig. 3. Here, several features are apparent; foremost among
them is that the serpentine (see Fig. 3b), coiled (see Fig. 3eef) and
hybrid designs (see Fig. 3geh) exhibit higher and more uniform
velocity distributions throughout the cooling plate as compared to
the conventional parallel (Fig. 3a), wavy channels (Fig. 3c) and
oblique fin channels (Fig. 3d). It is noted that the velocity profile in
the middle of the cooling plate for parallel, oblique fin and wavy
channels can be one order-of-magnitude lower than that of the inlet
velocity, even though a secondary flow exists in the oblique fin
channel. This is caused by unequal distribution of mass flow rate in
each passage; an alternate design e which is beyond the scope of
this paper e can be implemented to improve the uniformity of flow
distribution in each passage, see for example Refs. [31,32].
A higher velocity profile is expected to have direct impact on the
cooling performance; this is indeed the case, as can be inferred
from Fig. 4, which illustrates a trend according to which the surface
temperature increases along the flow channel from inlet to outlet
region. It is shown that the conventional parallel channel gives the
most non-uniform temperature distribution compared to others:
a “hot spot” zone with significant temperature variation of up to
25  C is located in the central zone (see Fig. 4a). The oblique fins
channel, on the other hand, performs better than the parallel
channel due to the presence of secondary flows, as can be seen in
Fig. 4d. This is in-line with the findings of Lee et al. [28,29] who
showed that the oblique fin channel yields better heat transfer rate
compared to the parallel channel. However, it should be noted that
a non-uniform temperature distribution and “hot spots” with
maximum temperature variation of up to 20  C exist in the outlet
region, which can be a drawback of this design. For the wavy
channel design, it is seen that the maximum temperature is slightly
lower (DTmax ¼ 18  C) and the “hot spot” area is smaller as well
(see Fig. 4c) compared to the first two designs. While in the
serpentine channel design, temperature near the inlet is low (close
to inlet temperature), and a high temperature (DTmax ¼ 15  C) exists
in the outlet area, as can be seen in Fig. 4b.
Thus far, the four rectilinear channel designs e parallel, oblique-
fin, wavy, and serpentine e have been found to result in non-
uniform temperature distribution (hot spots). Now, looking at the
results for the various coiled-base designs shown in Fig. 4eeh, one
can observe that the coiled-base designs yield a more uniform
temperature distribution compared to these four designs. In the
coiled-base designs, the structure of fresh and warm fluid passages
which are set up alternately together with high flow velocity inside
the channel produce a lower maximum temperature and a more

60
a paralel
3.5
serpentine
a coil outer
3 coil inner
50 wavy coil serpentine
oblique fin coil 2 serpentine
2.5
40
ΔTave, K

2
σstd, K

30 1.5

1
20
0.5
10
200 400 600 800 1000 0
200 400 600 800 1000
Re Re

9
b coil outer b paralel
60 coil inner 8 serpentine
coil serpentine wavy
coil 2 serpentine 7 oblique fin
50
6
ΔTave, K

σstd, K

40
5

30 4

3
20
2
10
1
200 400 600 800 1000 200 400 600 800 1000
Re Re
Fig. 5. Average temperature for (a) rectilinear designs and (b) coiled-base designs at Fig. 6. Standard deviation of the temperature for (a) rectilinear designs and (b) coiled-
various Reynolds numbers. base designs at various Reynolds numbers.
 J.C. Kurnia et al. / Applied Thermal Engineering 31 (2011) 1293e1304 1301

uniform temperature distribution. On closer inspection, it is seen Table 3

that the coiled design with outer inlet/outlet gives slightly higher Figure of merit for various cooling channel design for heat dissipation of 104 W m2.

temperature in the central area (see Fig. 4e), whereas the coiled Channel design Re 100 Re 250 Re 500 Re 750 Re 1000
design with inner inlet/outlet yields slightly lower temperature in Parallel 2853 284.9 51.3 18.5 8.7
the central zone (see Fig. 4f). Furthermore, for the hybrid design Serpentine 107.5 10.1 1.8 0.7 0.3
(coiled with single and double serpentine), there is no significant Parallel wavy 2275 221.0 40.6 15.1 7.5
Parallel with oblique fins 5730 568 96.5 32.9 15
difference in terms of the temperature distribution as compared to
Coiled with outer inlet/outlet 117.7 9.6 1.7 0.6 0.3
the coils with outer inlet/outlet design. Therefore, these results Coiled with inner inlet/outlet 113.9 9.7 1.7 0.6 0.3
suggest that coiled-base channel design is generally suitable for Coiled with serpentine 112.5 9.7 1.7 0.6 0.3
electronic component cooling which requires uniform temperature Coiled with double serpentine 111.9 9.6 1.7 0.6 0.3
distribution. Of course, further optimization may be needed for
specific applications.
temperature of oblique-fin channel is somewhat lower than the
wavy channel at low velocities and increasingly higher at high
4.2. Effect of mass flow rate velocities (see Fig. 5a). Moreover, the average temperature for
coiled-base channel design is higher than that of parallel and
A further point of interest in this study is the effect of mass flow oblique-fin channels at low velocities; whereas, at high velocities,
rate of coolant fluid as it is directly linked to the convective heat the coiled-base channel designs produce lower average tempera-
transfer and pumping power required. This study examined five ture than parallel and oblique-fin channels. This implies that the
different coolant flow rates which correspond to Re w100, 250, 500, coiled-base channel designs are more effective at higher flow
750 and 1000. Fig. 5 depicts the average temperature for various velocity conditions.
channel designs at various Reynolds numbers. As expected, the The cooling performance needs to be evaluated not only on the
average temperature decreases as the mass flow rate is increased. basis of the average temperature, but also on the degree of unifor-
Interestingly, the average temperature for some channel designs mity of the temperature distribution. As a measure of temperature
behaves differently at low and high velocities: the average uniformity, the standard deviation of temperature distribution at
various coolant flow rates, defined by Eq. (12), is compared. As seen
4
x 10

6 paralel
serpentine
a
wavy
5 oblique fin

4
ΔP, Pa

0
200 400 600 800 1000
Re
4
x 10

6 coil outer b
coil inner
coil serpentine
5 coil 2 serpentine

4
ΔP, Pa

0
200 400 600 800 1000
Re
Fig. 7. Pressure drop for (a) rectilinear designs and (b) coiled-base designs at various Fig. 8. Average temperature for (a) rectilinear designs and (b) coiled-base designs at
Reynolds numbers. various heat flux conditions.
1302 J.C. Kurnia et al. / Applied Thermal Engineering 31 (2011) 1293e1304
in Fig. 6, for all channel designs, the distributions become more
uniform as the coolant flow rate is increased. Further, the standard
deviation of temperature distribution for coiled-base channel
design is lower (see Fig. 6b) compared to that for other designs
(see Fig. 6a) over the whole range of flow velocities considered here.
This indicates that the coiled-base design yields more uniform
temperature distribution than do other designs. It is noteworthy
that coiled with inner inlet/outlet design gives more uniform
temperature distribution at higher velocities, but they do become
more non-uniform at lower velocities.
Among the rectilinear channel designs, the serpentine channel
yields a more uniform temperature distribution, as seen in Fig. 6a.
Moreover, for the wavy and oblique fin channel designs, the
temperature distributions are more uniform compared to the parallel
channel at higher velocities, but become more non-uniform than
those for parallel channel at lower velocities. This provides clear
evidence that the oblique-fin and wavy channels are also more
effective when used for higher flow rate applications, especially if
temperature uniformity is of greater interest e albeit their uniformity
of temperature distribution is still far below the coiled-base channel
designs.
Keeping the pressure drop at a minimum is of interest for
reducing the operating cost of thermal management; whence
a good channel design should be able to maintain low and uniform
temperature, whilst keeping the pressure drop to a minimum. The
coiled-base channel design, as shown in Fig. 7, requires the highest
Fig. 9. Standard deviation of the temperature for (a) rectilinear designs and (b) coiled-
base designs at various heat flux conditions.
pressure drop to drive the flow; this can be expected from the more
complex flow patterns inside the channel. The pressure drop for the
serpentine channel is somewhat lower (w10%) compared to that of
the coiled-base channel; however, it is still one order-magnitude
higher than that of parallel, oblique-fin and wavy channels. The
lowest pressure drop is obtained within the oblique fin channel,
followed by parallel and wavy channels. We note that if the flow
channel does not split, i.e. coiled-base and serpentine designs, the
pressure drop required is much higher than that with flow splitting
since the coolant fluid is forced to flow to longer passages. In
addition, the characteristics between pressure drop and Reynolds
number were determined; the slopes for the coiled-base and
serpentine channels are steeper than those for parallel, oblique fin
and wavy channels.
With respect to heat transfer performance and pressure drop in
the system, the “Figure of Merit” concept is introduced to account
for the effectiveness of heat transfer performance per unit pumping
power. Table 3 shows the computed figures of merit for various
channel designs at different Reynolds numbers. It is found that
apart from the high heat transfer rate and more uniform temper-
ature distribution, the coiled-base channel designs have lower
figure of merit. This is due to the fact that coiled-base channels
require the highest pressure drop (see Fig. 7). It is followed by the
Fig. 10. Pressure drop for (a) rectilinear designs and (b) coiled-base designs at various
heat flux conditions.
 J.C. Kurnia et al. / Applied Thermal Engineering 31 (2011) 1293e1304
serpentine channel which has slightly higher figure of merit at high
Reynolds numbers, but it gives more non-uniform temperature.
The parallel, wavy, and oblique-fin channels, on the other hand,
give higher figures of merit, up to around one order-of-magnitude,
compared to those for coiled and serpentine channels due to their
lower pressure drop. It is noted that oblique-fin channel gives the
highest figure of merit, followed by wavy channel and parallel
channel at all Reynolds numbers.
When designing cooling plates, however, careful balance and
consideration has to be given to heat transfer performance and
pumping power. If the performance and uniformity is of interest,
e.g. for chip cooling, one can consider coiled-base design for the
cooling plate. However, if pumping power is the major constraint,
e.g. for fuel cell cooling, the oblique-fin channel design may have
potential to be used after further optimization of the design.
4.3. Effect of heat flux
So far, the simulated heat flux arising from the electronic
equipment has been set to 104 W m2, which is a typical condition
found in fuel cells and low heat density electronic equipment.
Intuitively, the temperature is expected to be increase as the heat
flux is raised, as illustrated in Fig. 8. Here, the value of the average
temperature is found to be proportional to the prescribed heat flux
for all flow channel designs tested. A constant gradient, Tave/Qchip, is
observed for all channel designs, irrespective of the prescribed heat
flux. For each flow channel design, the coiled-base, serpentine, and
wavy channels give lower average temperature and show no
discernable difference, whereas the parallel channel design gives the
highest average temperature followed by the oblique-fin channel.
Proceeding to uniformity of the temperature distribution, Fig. 9,
the degree of temperature uniformity is also found to be propor-
tional to the prescribed heat flux; albeit the gradient and the order
of temperature uniformity for each flow channel design are slightly
different compared to those for the average temperature. Here, the
parallel channel exhibits the most non-uniform temperature
distribution among others. It is followed by the wavy channel (with
around 15% difference), oblique-fin channel (w18% difference), and
serpentine channel displaying up to 50% difference in standard
deviation. For the coiled-base channel design, it is found that the
slope is lower than that of others. Hence, a more uniform temper-
ature distribution is achieved even at higher heat fluxes. In addi-
tion, it is noted that the coiled design with inner inlet/outlet gives
the best uniformity of temperature distribution, especially for the
high heat flux condition. This is mainly due to the inlet position
which is placed at the middle of the chip to allow more fresh water
to be in contact with chip surface and cover larger heat transfer area
and, thus, maintain a more uniform distribution as compare to that
of the outer inlet/outlet design. This implies that coiled design with
inner inlet/outlet may have potential to be applied for electronic
cooling under high heat flux conditions.
As the thermo-physical properties of the working fluid is func-
tions of temperature, it is therefore of interest to evaluate the effect
of heat flux conditions to the fluid properties and its hydrodynamics.
Fig. 10 shows pressure drops required for various channel designs at
various heat flux conditions. It is found that, for all cases, the pressure
drop decreases when heat flux increases. This is attributed to the
decrease of viscosity at higher temperature arising from higher heat
flux. Closer inspection notice that for coiled-base design, at the same
inlet conditions, the pressure drop required reduces up to around
13% when the heat flux raised from 104 W m2 to 5  104 W m2,
followed by serpentine (12%), wavy (11%), parallel (8%), and oblique-
fin channel (5%). Thus, it can be deduced that coiled-base channel is
more effective to be used in high heat flux condition as the pumping
power is lower than when it is used at low heat flux conditions.
1303
5. Concluding remarks
A computational study has been conducted to investigate the
heat transfer performance of various cooling channel designs. Eight
channel configurations,  parallel, wavy, oblique-fin, serpentine,
and coiled-base channel design, i.e., coil with outer inlet/outlet, coil
with outer inlet/outlet, hybrid coil with serpentine channel, and
hybrid coil with double serpentine e were investigated and their
performance are compared with each other in terms of the figure of
merit. It is found that even though coiled-base channel designs give
higher and more uniform heat transfer rate, they also impose
a significantly higher pressure drop penalty. As a result, the figure
of merit of the coiled-base channel design is lower. However, for the
application where heat transfer performance and uniformity is of
interest and pumping power is not an issue, the coiled-base
channel can be a desired choice especially in critical applications
where cooling performance is of paramount importance.
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