International Journal of Thermal Sciences 138 (2019) 504–511

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International Journal of Thermal Sciences

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

Effects of flow inlet angle on flow maldistribution and thermal performance T

of water cooled mini-channel heat sink
Sanjeev Kumar, Pawan Kumar Singh∗
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology (ISM), Dhanbad, Jharkhand, 826004, India

ARTICLE INFO ABSTRACT

Keywords: The cooling capacity of the mini-channel heat sink can be increased by making the flow distribution uniform
Heat sink through all the parallel mini-channels. The present study proposes a minichannel heat sink with modified novel
Maldistribution factor inlet/outlet arrangement with different flow inlet angle such as (θ = 90°, θ = 105°, and θ = 120°) for better flow
Header distribution and heat transfer performance. This proposed minichannel heat sink has been analyzed numerically
Thermal resistance
with the help of ANSYS-Fluent. Water is used as a working fluid and aluminum is selected as a heat sink material.
Flow inlet angle
Total 28 numbers of parallel mini channels are considered having the hydraulic diameter of 1.5 mm. It is found
that flow distribution changes with this flow inlet angle and minimum flow maldistribution is observed for
proposed inlet/outlet arrangement with θ = 105° and results in better and uniform cooling of the heat sink.
Further increment in flow inlet angle increases the non-uniformity of flow. The thermal performance also has
been found best for θ = 105° and the value of maximum base temperature was also lowest for this configuration.
It is suggested that the performance of mini channel heat sink can be improved if coolant enters the distributor
header with flow inlet angle θ = 105° and exit from the middle of the collector header.

1. Introduction header is considered as infinite reservoirs. Kim et al. [2] considered

Thermal management is required for electro-mechanical systems,
which have been miniaturized and integrated by closed packed design.
As the devices or systems become smaller, heat flux increases in gen-
eral. Therefore, an effective cooling approach for the mini-micro de-
vices is required. The mini-microchannel heat sinks are one of the most
favorable devices for cooling down the mini-microelectronics compo-
nent by forced convection heat transfer. One of the components that
most firmly affect the performance of mini-microchannel heat sink is
the uneven distribution of flow in the different parallel mini/micro-
channels where the heat exchange took place. This uneven distribution
of flow in mini-channels is called flow maldistribution. This is a cause of
the reduction in both thermal and fluid-dynamic performances.
Recently, a large number of studies have been carried out to understand
the mechanism of flow maldistribution and heat transfer of single-phase
flow in the mini-microchannel heat sink.
Several authors have investigated single phase flow maldistribution
both experimentally and numerically. Bajura and Jones [1] investigated
flow distribution in parallel branches of different headers; both analy-
tically and experimentally using pressure flow equation and flow dis-
tribution equation. They found that analytical and experimental results
were in good agreement and uniform flow was achieved when the
three different headers shapes such as (rectangular, triangular, and
trapezoidal) and studied flow distribution in the parallel manifold with
these header shapes. They found that regardless of Reynolds number,
flow distribution is more uniform in the triangular header. Chu et al.
[3] analyzed the flow maldistribution at the inlet manifold with the
help of CFD (computational fluid dynamics). They used four inlet
headers, including inclined baffle, segmental baffle, helical baffle, and
improved helical baffle. The header which consists the helical baffle is
having the smallest non-uniformity. Flow distribution in microchannel
also depends significantly on flow inlet configuration, flow rate and
viscosity of the fluid. Flow maldistribution increases at a high flow rate
and low viscosity due to inertial effect [4,5]. They also found that flow
distribution is affected with a small variation in channel dimensions
due to manufacturing tolerances. Saeed and Kim [6] obtained the best
header design to minimize flow maldistribution for mini-channel heat
sink using analytical and numerical methods. Results showed that dis-
tribution of fluid within parallel mini-channel improved through proper
design of the distributor and collector headers which resulted in im-
provement of the heat transfer and hydraulic performance of the heat
sink. Xia et al. [7] studied fluid flow and heat transfer in a microchannel
with different inlet/outlet locations such as (I, C and Z-type) and dif-
ferent header shape such as (rectangular, trapezoidal and triangular

∗
Corresponding author.
E-mail address: pawan@iitism.ac.in (P.K. Singh).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijthermalsci.2019.01.014
Received 20 February 2018; Received in revised form 11 January 2019; Accepted 13 January 2019
Available online 21 January 2019
1290-0729/ © 2019 Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved.
S. Kumar, P.K. Singh
Fig. 1. (a) Mini-channel heat sink (b) Conventional inlet/outlet arrangement with rectangular headers (c) Proposed inlet/outlet arrangement with rectangular
headers.
header). It is found that flow distribution is better for I-type and poor
for Z-type. Among rectangular, trapezoidal and triangular headers, it is
found that uniform flow distribution has been achieved with a rectan-
gular header. Siva et al. [8] carried out an experimental study on flow
maldistribution and its effect on the thermal performance of parallel
microchannel cooling systems. Experimental results show that flow
distribution among the channel improves with decrease in hydraulic
diameter due to higher pressure drop. Chein and Chen [9] performed a
numerical study of the inlet/outlet arrangement effect on microchannel
heat sink performance and found that because of velocity mal-
distribution, the flow rate in each heat sink channel is different. As a
result, temperature non-uniformity is more serious in the heat sink with
horizontally fluid supply and collection as compared to vertically fluid
supply. Nielsen et al. [10] found that the degradation of the perfor-
mance of microchannel heat exchangers is due to flow maldistribution.
Liu and Yu [11] performed a numerical study on performances of the
mini-channel heat sink with non-uniform inlet baffles and found that
flow distribution in channels is more uniform with non-uniform inlet
baffles. Jajja et al. [12] and Saeed and Kim [13] performed an ex-
perimental and numerical study respectively to investigate the sys-
tematic effect of heat sink geometry (by reducing fin spacing) with
water as cooling fluid on the microprocessor base temperature and
found that the fin spacing has a significant effect on heat transfer. Luo
and Liu [14] performed an experimental and numerical study on the
working performance of mini-channel heat exchangers with different
channel widths using liquid metal as a coolant. Based on the result, it is
found that the mean heat transfer coefficients for heat exchangers in-
crease as the mass flow rate of coolant increases, and the exchanger
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International Journal of Thermal Sciences 138 (2019) 504–511
with the smallest channel width is proven to have the best heat transfer
performance. Yang et al. [15] developed an optimization process for the
flow and thermal performance of micro/mini-channel heat sink using
water and liquid metal cooling. They found that liquid metal based
minichannel heat sink has better thermal performance. Pistoresi et al.
[16] numerically analyzed that flow maldistribution can be minimized
by changing the angle of a triangular header and decreasing the number
of channels. Hao et al. [17] carried out a numerical analysis to in-
vestigate the flow distribution and heat transfer of a U-type parallel
heat sink. They found that the flow distribution is not only a function of
the flow condition but also the geometric size of the header. Mu et al.
[18] analyzed temperature uniformity in a novel mini-channel heat sink
numerically. They found that the temperature uniformity and thermal
resistance are highly dependent on flow distribution. Cho et al. [19,20]
experimentally and numerically investigated the effects of channel and
header geometry under non-uniform heat flux condition.
Literature review suggests that plenty of research has been carried
out on flow maldistribution and it can be concluded that the perfor-
mance of water-cooled minichannel heat sink is affected by flow mal-
distribution. Different parameters such as header design, flow inlet
condition, flow and fluid properties all are important parameters, which
can affect the flow maldistribution. Flow maldistribution in mini-
channel heat sink can be minimized either by proper header design [6]
or by changing inlet and outlet positions of distributor and collector
header [9] respectively. It can be inferred here that changing in flow
condition will be a better alternative than changing the heat sink geo-
metry (straight, triangular, wavy etc.) because changing the heat sink
geometry increases the fabrication cost of the heat sink. In the present
S. Kumar, P.K. Singh International Journal of Thermal Sciences 138 (2019) 504–511

study, a novel approach of changing flow inlet angle at the inlet of Table 1
distributor header has been proposed to take the advantage of direc- Geometrical parameters of the mini-channel heat sink.
tional inertia. The computational study is performed using a full do- Parameter Value
main simulation approach to include the edge effect. The result will
show that a careful optimization of flow inlet condition can sig- Heat sink length, Lhs 47 mm
Heat sink width, Whs 55 mm
nificantly reduce the flow maldistribution.
Channel length, lch 45 mm
Channel width, wch 1 mm
2. Minichannel heat sink geometric configurations Channel depth, dch 3 mm
Header length, lh 55 mm
A three-dimensional model of the minichannel heat sink is created Header depth, dh 3 mm
with the help of Solidworks 16. Dimensions of heat sink are taken si- Header width, wh 10 mm
Number of channels, N 28
milar to the heat sink used by Gigabyte 3D Galaxy liquid cooling system
to realize the practical importance of this study. A minichannel heat
sink with different fin spacing such as (0.2, 0.5, 1.0, and 1.5 mm) has (2) Properties of water and aluminium are independent of temperature
been used by Jajja et al. [12]. In this study, a mini channel heat sink and pressure.
with 1.0 mm fin spacing is considered. Total 28 mini channel having (3) Interface losses between fluid (water) and solid (aluminium) are
hydraulic diameter 1.5 mm is considered as shown in Fig. 1 (a). Hy- negligible thus ignored.
draulic diameter of the channel is given by Eq. (1).
2wch dch According to above-mentioned assumptions, the governing equa-
Dh =
wch + dch (1) tions for the fluid domain are Continuity, momentum and energy
equation.
A conventional and proposed inlet/outlet arrangements with dif-
ferent flow inlet angle are considered. Conventional inlet/outlet ar- .V =0 (2)
rangement as shown in Fig. 1 (b) is used by Jajja et al. [12] in their
experimental work and by Saeed and Kim [6] in their numerical work. (V . V) = p+µ 2V
(3)
The proposed inlet/outlet arrangement with different flow inlet angle is
shown in Fig. 1 (c). The rectangular headers have been used for both Cp ( V . T ) = kf 2T
(4)
arrangements. In a conventional arrangement, water enters in dis-
Energy equation for solid domain:
tributor header vertically upward and getting out vertically downward
from the outlet. In proposed inlet/outlet arrangement, water entered ks 2T =0 (5)
distributor header horizontally with different flow inlet angle such as
All the governing equations (2)–(5) are solved with the help of
(θ = 90°, θ = 105° and θ = 120°) as shown in Fig. 2. The fluid is dis-
ANSYS-Fluent using finite volume method (FVM). A segregated implicit
tributed to all the mini-channels through distributor header and col-
solver with SIMPLE pressure correction algorithm has been considered
lected by the collector header. The length of distributor and collector
to compute the flow field in mini-channels. Momentum and energy
header is same as heat sink width while the width of the header is
equations are discretized by second-order upwind scheme. Based on the
10 mm. The depth of header is considered same as the depth of mini-
governing equations and operating conditions, inlet velocity and outlet
channels. All dimensions of the heat sink with headers are given in
pressure boundary conditions are applied to inlet and outlet respec-
Table 1. All the dimensions of the minichannel heat sink are same for all
tively.
type of flow arrangements. Only the inlet/outlet positions have been
At inlet,
changed.
V = uin and T = Tin (298 K) (6)
3. Governing equations and boundary conditions
At outlet,
To investigate the effect of changing flow inlet angle of the inlet of P = Pout (atm) (7)
distributor header on flow maldistribution and heat transfer perfor-
mance of heat sink the following assumptions are taken: At fluid-solid interface,
TS Tf
(1) Fluid flow is in steady state, single phase, laminar, incompressible u = 0, Ts = Tf , and ks = kf
Sn Sn (8)
and three dimensional.
In this present numerical study, the solid aluminium is considered as

Fig. 2. Flow inlet angle at the inlet of distributor header (a) θ = 90° (b) θ = 105° (c) θ = 120°.

506
S. Kumar, P.K. Singh
Fig. 3. Meshing of fluid and solid domain.
the heat sink material and water was used as the cold fluid. The
properties of water are ρ = 998.2 kg/m3, Cp = 4182 J/kg-K,
kf = 0.6 W/m-K, ν = 1.0 × 10−6 m2/s, and for solid aluminium are
ks = 202.4 W/m-K, respectively. The inlet temperature of the water is
fixed at 298 K, and the inlet velocity of water is varied from 0.1390 to
0.5555 m/s. The Reynolds number in this study is ranged from 300 to
1000 and flow can be assumed laminar. A constant heat flux (15 W/
cm2) is given to the base of the heat sink for all cases by assuming most
of the electronic components generate heat flux between 10 W/cm2 to
50 W/cm2. All walls others than the interface and base are assigned
with adiabatic and no-slip boundary conditions. When the residual
values become less than 10−6 for the continuity, x-velocity, y-velocity,
and z-velocity and 10−9 for the energy, the solutions are considered to
be converged.
3.1. Grid independence and validations
Both solid and fluid domain is discretized using ANSYS Fluent with
fine hexahedral control volumes. Computational cells with 14 × 105,
44 × 105, 70 × 105 and 100 × 105 nodes are considered to test the grid
independence of the solution. In Fig. 4 (a), the velocity distribution
variations in the 28 channels in the proposed arrangement heat sink are
shown using four grid systems under same volumetric flow rate and
same boundary conditions. It is observed that 70 × 105 nodes and
100 × 105 nodes have the almost same velocity in parallel mini-
channels. 70 × 105 nodes are considered for all the simulation due to
less computing time and less allocated memory by the solver. The mesh
Fig. 4a. Grid independence.
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International Journal of Thermal Sciences 138 (2019) 504–511
of the fluid domain and the solid domain is shown in Fig. 3. To ensure
node to node connectivity, the same approach is applied to both fluid
and solid domain. Node to node connectivity of solid and fluid domain
minimizes interpolation losses.
Numerical results have been validated with experimental results of
Jajja et al. [12] as shown in Fig. 4 (b). Jajja et al. [12] used copper as
heat sink material. For validation of numerical results, copper and
aluminium both are set as heat sink material while for all other simu-
lation, aluminum is set as heat sink material to investigate the flow
maldistribution. Fig. 4 (b) shows that numerical results with both ma-
terial i.e. copper and aluminum are in close agreement and following
the same trend with experimental results. A slightly higher value of
thermal resistance is obtained with aluminium as compared to copper
due to the lower thermal conductivity of aluminium.
Numerical results of present study are also validated with results of
Saeed and Kim [13]. They used copper as heat sink material with
conventional flow arrangement. Numerical results of present study are
in close agreement with results of Saeed and Kim [13] for thermal re-
sistance as shown in Fig. 4 (b). Velocity profile is also validated for
conventional heat sink with velocity profile of Saeed and Kim [13] for
(1.0-1.0-3.0) fin spacing and 0.5 LPM. Maximum velocity in mini-
channels is also in close agreement with Saeed and Kim [13] as shown
in Fig. 4 (c).
4. Results and discussion
This study is aimed to minimize flow maldistribution by designing
Fig. 4b. Validation of numerical results with experimental results.
S. Kumar, P.K. Singh
Fig. 4c. Velocity profile for 0.5 LPM in parallel minichannels for conventional
arrangement.
inlet and outlet position of distributor and collector header respectively
and by changing flow inlet angle at the inlet of distributor header as
shown in Fig. 2(a–c). Flow uniformity in the parallel mini-channels is
calculated with the help of maldistribution factor (MF) given in Eq. (9)
and Eq. (10) respectively. For uniform flow distribution, maldistribu-
tion factor (MF) should be close to zero.
1 N mk mavg
2 last channel is on the right side of the heat sink. It is observed that mass
MF =
N k=1 mavg (9)
Where
N
m
k=1 k
mavg =
N (10)
The thermal performance of a mini-channel heat sink is evaluated
with the help of Eq. (13).
(Tb Tin) (Tb Tout )
LMTD =
ln ( T b Tin
Tb Tout ) (11)
Q = mCP (Tout Tin ) (12)
LMTD
Rth =
Q (13)
WhereRth is known as thermal resistance and Tb is the base temperature
of the heat sink.
4.1. Effect of flow inlet angle on flow maldistribution
Flow maldistribution is affected by flow inlet angle in proposed
inlet/outlet arrangement. Fig. 5 shows velocity contour in mini-chan-
nels for conventional and proposed inlet/outlet arrangements. In the
conventional arrangement, water entered in the distributor header
vertically upward then strikes the upper wall of distributor header. The
fluid bounce back and spread out in the distributor header, thereafter it
is distributed to all the mini-channels and finally exits vertically
downward via an outlet from collector header. The inlet and outlet are
in the middle of headers due to which the maximum pressure drop and
higher flow rate are found in the middle channels.
As the fluid is distributed in the header, the pressure drop is lower
towards the left and right side from the middle of the heat sink which
results in less flow rate in the channels which are far from inlet as
shown in Fig. 5 (a). In proposed novel inlet/outlet arrangement, water
entered in distributor header horizontally and with different flow inlet
angle, then distributed to all the minichannels and finally exits via an
outlet from collector header. It was observed that when flow inlet angle
is changing from 90° to 105°, the uniformity of flow in the parallel mini
channel is improved up to an angle θ = 105°. It is noticed that with
further increment in flow inlet angle, flow distribution become non-
uniform inside the minichannels as shown in Fig. 5(b–d). The reason for
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International Journal of Thermal Sciences 138 (2019) 504–511
this behaviour can be explained by the velocity component in the x-
direction, z-direction and zero gauge pressure at the outlet. At θ = 90°,
the velocity component is only in z-direction due to this the velocity is
more in channels which are away from the inlet because of the inertia
of water. As the flow inlet angle increases from θ = 90° to θ = 120° the
velocity component is divided into two components (z-direction as well
as x-direction). It is observed that flow distribution is getting more
uniform in mini-channels up to an angle θ = 105° and further incre-
ment in flow inlet angle, increases velocity component in the x-direc-
tion and reduces velocity component in the z-direction. As a result, the
channels in the vicinity of the inlet will have a higher mass flow rate as
compared to the channels away from the inlet.
Fig. 6 shows the fluid distribution in mini-channels from distributor
header. The distributor header is divided into three sections. In the first
section, the flow in the mini-channels is due to velocity component in
the x-direction. In the second section, the flow in mini-channels is due
to the zero gauge-pressure (suction effect) at the outlet, which results in
more pressure difference in mini-channels. In the third section, the flow
is due to the z-component of velocity. All the above factors are re-
sponsible for uniform flow distribution in parallel mini-channels of the
heat sink. Fig. 7 shows the mass flow rate distribution in mini-channels.
There are total 28 channels; the first channel is on the left side and the
flow rate is more uniform in mini-channels of proposed inlet/outlet
arrangement with flow inlet angle θ = 105° while conventional ar-
rangement shows higher flow maldistribution. Non-uniformity of flow
in channels is calculated by maldistribution factor. High value of mal-
distribution factor indicates the non-uniformity of flow in parallel mini
channels and a small value of maldistribution factor indicates the uni-
form distribution of flow in parallel mini channels. Flow maldistribu-
tion in mini-channels is dependent on volumetric flow rate due to
pressure difference and inertia of fluid. Maldistribution factor (MF)
varies with volumetric flow rate as shown in Fig. 8. As volumetric flow
rate increases, the maldistribution factor also increases.
It is also noticed that the effect of flow inlet angle change is not
random. The optimum results are obtained at inlet flow angle θ = 1050.
The decrease or increase in this optimum angle results in increasing the
maldistribution factor (MF) as illustrated in Fig. 9.
Total pressure drop across the heatsink (pressure drop in distributor
header + pressure drop in minichannels + pressure drop in collector
header) is minimum in case of proposed inlet/outlet flow arrangement
with flow inlet angle θ = 90° and maximum in case of conventional
inlet/outlet flow arrangement. Fig. 10 depicts the variation in pressure
drop with volumetric flow rate. Pressure drop increases with an in-
crease in volumetric flow rate.
4.2. Effect of flow maldistribution on thermal performance of the heat sink
Flow maldistribution substantially affects the cooling capacity of the
minichannel heat sink. Due to flow maldistribution, hot spots are
generated in the minichannel heat sink. To mitigate these hot spots, a
uniform flow distribution or uniform cooling is required. The uniform
flow distribution in parallel mini channels results in more uniform
cooling of the heat sink. Fig. 11 shows temperature contour at the base
of the heat sink for all flow arrangements. Non uniform cooling is ob-
tained in conventional flow arrangement as shown in Fig. 11 (a). It is
found that the cooling of the minichannel heat sink is better and uni-
form when water entered in distributor header at an angle of θ = 105°
in proposed inlet/outlet arrangement as shown in Fig. 11 (c).
For the same volumetric flow rate, the maximum base temperature
(332 K) has been found in the conventional arrangement because of
non-uniform cooling in heat sink as discussed earlier. Minimum base
temperature (330 K) has been found in the proposed inlet/outlet ar-
rangement with flow inlet angle θ = 105° because of uniform cooling in
heat sink. It is also noticed that a temperature drop of 2 °C has been
achieved with the proposed inlet/outlet flow arrangement as compared
S. Kumar, P.K. Singh International Journal of Thermal Sciences 138 (2019) 504–511

Fig. 5. Velocity contour of the proposed mini channel heat sink for fixed mass flow rate.

Fig. 6. Flow distribution in mini-channels from distributor header.

Fig. 7. Mass flow rate in the parallel mini-channels along the width of the heat Fig. 8. Maldistribution factor vs. volumetric flow rate for different flow inlet
sink. angle.

to conventional flow arrangement. The maximum base temperature for
all arrangement for a fixed volumetric flow rate (0.5 LPM) is shown in
Fig. 12.
Thermal performance of the heat sink is defined by thermal re-
sistance. The lower value of thermal resistance indicates the better
thermal performance of heat sink. The value of thermal resistance can
be obtained from Eq. (13). Thermal resistance is lower in the proposed
inlet/outlet flow arrangement with flow inlet angle θ = 105° and
higher in conventional flow arrangement due to lower base tempera-
ture and higher base temperature of heat sink respectively. It is found
that for higher flow rate, heat transfer rate increases which results in
lowering down the base temperature of heat sink. Due to which,
thermal resistance decreases with an increase in volumetric flow rate as
shown in Fig. 13.

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S. Kumar, P.K. Singh International Journal of Thermal Sciences 138 (2019) 504–511

Fig. 9. Maldistribution factor with respect to flow inlet angle for same flow Fig. 12. Maximum base temperature of mini-channel heat sink at 0.5 LPM.
rate.

Fig. 13. Thermal resistances with respect to different flow rate for different
Fig. 10. Total pressure drop in the heat sink with respect to volumetric flow
flow inlet angle.
rate.

channel heat sink using a novel inlet/outlet approach. A mini channel

5. Conclusions
heat sink with conventional and proposed inlet/outlet arrangements for
fluid flow has been considered and full domain simulation is carried
A detailed numerical investigation is performed to minimize flow
out. Based on the results, the following conclusions are made.
maldistribution and improve the thermal performance of a mini-

Fig. 11. Temperature distribution at the base of mini channel heat sink at 0.5 LPM.

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S. Kumar, P.K. Singh International Journal of Thermal Sciences 138 (2019) 504–511

(1) A minichannel heat sink with proposed inlet/outlet arrangement Greek symbols
with flow inlet angle θ = 105° has more uniform flow distribution
in parallel mini-channels of the heat sink which means less flow ρ density, (kg/m3)
maldistribution as compared to conventional inlet/outlet arrange- μ dynamic viscosity, (Pa-s)
ment. ν kinematic viscosity, (m2/s)
(2) The value of maldistribution factor should be close to zero for the
better performance of heat sink. It is observed that conventional Appendix A. Supplementary data
inlet/outlet arrangement has the highest value of maldistribution
factor while proposed inlet/outlet arrangement with flow inlet Supplementary data to this article can be found online at https://
angle θ = 105° has the lowest value of maldistribution factor. Also, doi.org/10.1016/j.ijthermalsci.2019.01.014.
maldistribution factor increases with volumetric flow rate.
(3) Because of flow maldistribution in parallel mini-channels, non- References
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MF maldistribution Factor

511