International Journal of Thermal Sciences 161 (2021) 106730

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International Journal of Thermal Sciences

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

Effect of groove depth on hydrothermal characteristics of the rectangular

microchannel heat sink
Krishanu Kumar, Pankaj Kumar *
Department of Mechanical Engineering, SRM Institute of Science and Technology Kattankulathur, Chennai, 603203, TN, India

A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T

Keywords: A three-dimensional numerical simulation is conducted to study the characteristic of fluid flow and heat transfer
Microchannel in the rectangular microchannel heat sink with arc grooves. The numerical model of the microchannel is vali­
Nusselt number dated with the experimental data at various Reynolds numbers. The groove configurations in the present analysis
Poiseuille number
are grooves on the floor of the microchannel, grooves on both the sidewalls and grooves on the sidewall, and the
Groove
floor of the microchannel. The groove depth is varied from h = 20 μm to h = 80 μm for all different configu­
rations. The simulations are carried out for Reynolds number (Re) 200, 900, and 2000, with constant bottom wall
temperature. Nusselt number, Poiseuille number, and performance factor are analyzed for the above cases to
quantify the effect of groove configuration and groove depth on the hydrothermal characteristics of the
microchannel. It is observed that the addition of grooves on the surface of the microchannel, results in the
formation of pseudo secondary flow which enhances the heat transfer in the microchannel at the expense of
increased Poiseuille number. The groove depth only affects the performance of the microchannel at lower
Reynolds number, and at higher Reynolds number, the groove depth does not have any role in the performance
enhancement. The groove configuration also plays a major role in the performance enhancement of the
microchannel.

1. Introduction
Microchannel heat sinks are compact and innovative temperature
reduction technology for the removal of a large amount of heat from a
small area. They are mostly made from heat-conducting material such as
silicon, aluminum, copper, etc. The compactness and high heat transfer
carrying capacity of microchannel heat sinks make them very effective
differentiating them from conventional heat sinks. The size of the heat
sink plays a crucial role in heat transfer, particularly for high-
performance microprocessors, semiconductors, etc. The first micro­
channel was brought to light by Tuckerman and Pease [1] in 1981. They
designed a rectangular microchannel heat sink in an 1∗1 cm2 silicon
wafer. The dimensions of the rectangular wafer were 50 μm width and
302 μm depth and it was separated by 50 μm thick walls. The micro­
channel was able to dissipate around 790 W/cm2 with a maximum
substrate temperature rise of 71◦ C above water inlet temperature and a
2.2 bar pressure drop. Sasaki and Kishimoto [2] reported the effect of
channel width and height at different pressure drop conditions and
obtained an optimized channel width for maximum heat transfer by the
microchannel. Peng and Peterson [3] concluded from their experiments
that the friction factor and heat transfer are greatly influenced by the
hydraulic diameter and channel aspect ratio in a rectangular micro­
channel. They concluded that for the design of the heat sink, both
thermo-physical substrate properties, as well as physical geometry, are
equally important. Various methods have been developed to improve
the cooling capacity of the microchannel. It is achieved by the use of an
external source (by active method) or alteration of the flow path (passive
method). In the passive method, changes in fluid properties (viscosity,
density), geometrical parameters (length, the aspect ratio of the chan­
nel), and flow parameters (Reynolds number) were attempted in various
research studies by Lee et al. [4]; Liu et al. [5]; and Chen et al. [6]. A
converging-diverging rectangular microchannel was numerically stud­
ied for the heat transfer enhancement in microchannels by Yong and Teo
[7]. The results of the numerical simulations showed that a pair of
symmetrical recirculating vortices was formed to serves as an enhancing
factor for the mixing of fluids and convective heat transfer. Steinke and
Kand-lika [8] reviewed some conventional heat transfer methods. They
compiled several ideas and techniques that could be used for

* Corresponding author. Department of Mechanical Engineering, SRM Institute of Science and Technology, Chennai 600036 India.
E-mail addresses: kk8897@live.com (K. Kumar), pankajkr@srmist.edu.in (P. Kumar).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijthermalsci.2020.106730
Received 1 October 2019; Received in revised form 11 October 2020; Accepted 5 November 2020
Available online 16 December 2020
1290-0729/© 2020 Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved.
K. Kumar and P. Kumar
Fig. 1. a) The schematic of the microchannel with grooves on the walls (blue: velocity inlet, red: pressure outlet, dashed blue lines: grooves on the floor, and orange
dashed line: grooves on the side walls) and b) the schematic of the grooves.
enhancement of heat transfer in microchannels and minichannels.
Another method explored was where baffles were added in the flow path
and it was observed that there was an increase in heat transfer. The
baffles placed on the internal surface of the microchannel tripped the
boundary layer thereby enhancing heat transfer. The change in the
boundary layer enhanced heat transfer, induced secondary flow to in­
crease the flow turbulence, and increased the surface area for convective
heat transfer. However, the large pressure drop was a disadvantage. Tao
et al. [9] studied three possible mechanisms for enhancing heat transfer,
namely increasing flow interruptions, decreasing the thermal boundary
layer, and increasing the velocity gradient. Studies involving stacked
microchannel over a particular range of flow provided a larger flow
passage which resulted in reduced pressure drop Wei et al. [10]. They
also identified that over a particular range of flows, counterflow
arrangement had better temperature uniformity, while parallel flow had
a better peak temperature reduction. Lee et al. [11] studied the effect of
oblique fins in microchannels on thermal transport. In this study,
sectional fins were employed to modulate the flow. This resulted in the
re-initialization of the thermal boundary layer which reduced the
thickness of the boundary layer. This entrance effect caused localized
turbulence and continuous development of eddies in the fluid resulting
in improved heat transfer. In a similar line of approach, grooves and ribs
were incorporated in microchannels, it was found that there was an
increment in the heat transfer with minimum pressure penalty. The heat
transfer of the microchannel depends on the groove or rib aspect ratio,
its shape, and the Reynolds number of the working fluid. The effect of
trapezoidal and triangular grooves on microchannel heat sink perfor­
mance was investigated by Kuppusamy et al. [12]. The formation of
larger vortices that enhance flow mixing, shown better thermal perfor­
mance in triangular grooves as compared to the trapezoidal grooves in
microchannel. The variation of the groove tip length ratio, depth ratio,
pitch ratio of triangular, rectangular, and trapezoidal grooves were
numerically modeled by Ahmed and Ahmed [13]. The trapezoidal
groove showed better heat transfer enhancement compared to the rest
two shapes at optimum parametric conditions. Abouali and Bagher­
nezhad [14] conducted a numerical investigation of the effect of grooves
on the bottom and side walls in the microchannel. They studied two
types of grooves, arc and rectangle shape, and compared them with the
simple microchannel. The results exposited that the arc grooves had a
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International Journal of Thermal Sciences 161 (2021) 106730
better enhancement of heat removal as compared to rectangular grooves
but the latter had a better coefficient of performance for the case in
which the grooves were present in the bottom and sidewalls of the
microchannel. All design variables, rib height, and rib width influenced
the thermal and flow characteristics with rib height having a significant
effect Xia et al. [15]. The flow and heat transfer characteristics of a
zig-zag microchannel were investigated numerically by Ma et al. [16].
The pressure drop increased due to the disturbance enhanced to stabi­
lized flows which caused localized heat transfer enhancement. An
experimental investigation was done by Zhai et al. [17] to study the
hydrodynamics of a microchannel heat sink with ribs and cavities. An
increase in Reynolds number, the flow turbulence intensified due to the
vortices formed in cavities and ribs, while no vortices were observed at
low Reynolds number. The introduction of ribs and grooves on the
surface of the microchannel introduced by Ghani et al. [18] augmented
the overall performance of heat transfer in heat sinks, by increasing
Nusselt number as well as friction factor. From the literature survey, it is
found that most of the numerical work available is on variations of
groove shapes and their geometric parameters at low Reynolds numbers.
The author Kumar [19] undertook three-dimensional numerical work on
rectangular and arc grooves incorporated on sidewalls of a trapezoidal
microchannel at Re = 500 with a constant depth of the groove. Abouali
and Baghernezhad [14] studied two types of grooves, arc and rectangle
shape, and compared them with the simple microchannel with constant
groove depth. The addition of grooves on the surface of the micro­
channel enhances the performance. The dependence of the enhancement
on the groove depth at higher Re for different groove configurations is
not systematically analyzed. The present analysis explores the depen­
dence of groove depth and configuration at different flow regimes, on
the hydrothermal characteristics and performance enhancement of the
microchannel. The numerical model of Kumar [19] is utilized to incor­
porate the modification to the geometry of the microchannel.
2. Numerical simulation
2.1. Computational model
The microchannel consist of multiple channels which may be
computationally very expensive and time-consuming. The symmetricity
K. Kumar and P. Kumar International Journal of Thermal Sciences 161 (2021) 106730

Table 1
The dimension of the microchannel heat sink.
hR (μm) wR (μm) w1 (μm) wT (μm) hR (μm) hT (μm) L (mm)

713 231 118 467 5637 19,050 44

Table 2
The dimensions of the groove on the surface of the microchannel.
Length of groove distance between two depth of groove number of
(l) (μm) grooves (d) (μm) (h) (μm) groove

1000 500 20 29
1000 500 40 29
1000 500 60 29
1000 500 80 29

of the microchannel is used for the conjugate heat analysis for a unit
microchannel. A single cell of a microchannel has a length L = 44 mm,
width wT = 467 μm, and height hT = 19,050 μm, and the dimension of
the inlet of the channel is 713 μm and 231 μm respectively Qu and
Mudawar [20]. The microchannel schematic diagram is shown in Fig. 1.
The dimension of the microchannel is shown in Table 1 (see Fig. 2).
The numerical model is then incorporated with grooves into the flow
path inside the simple microchannel. There are 29 arc grooves incor­
porated on the sidewalls and floor of the microchannel. The width of the
groove is taken as 1000 μm and space between two consecutive grooves
is 500 μm which is kept constant for all the cases. The depth of the
groove is varied from 20 μ m to 80 μm with an interval of 20 μm. The
dimension for the different cases of the groove depth is given in Table 2.

2.2. Governing equations Fig. 2. Mesh near the inlet a) front view and b) cut section of the fluid domain
indicating the first layer thickness inflation.
Commercial software Ansys-Fluent® is used to carry out the simu­
lations, and water is the working fluid. The mean free path of water is forces are neglected.
1.7 ×10− 10 and the hydraulic diameter of the microchannel is 348.9 μm,
the Knudsen number is maintained at less than 0.001 which satisfies the
2.4. Computational scheme
continuum concept. Ansys Fluent solves the momentum equation, en­
ergy equation, and continuity equation for the solid and liquid state as
The structured mesh is created using the Ansys-workbench meshing
expressed below:
software. The fluid part element size is fine near the wall (δS = 0.009
→
∇V =0 (1) mm) as compared to the solid region to capture the velocity and tem­
perature gradient effectively and also to maintain the wall y+ ≤ 3.Fig. 2
(→ →) ( →) shows the typical mesh near the inlet of microchannel. Fig. 2 (a) indicate
ρ V .∇ V = − ∇P + ∇. μ∇ V (2)
the fine mesh near fluid domain and relatively coarse mesh in solid
(→ ) domain. The sectional view of mesh for the fluid part alone shown in
ρf CP,f V .∇T = kf ∇2 Tf (3) Fig. 2 (b). The grid-independent analysis is carried out to find the op­
timum number of nodes, and the variation in pressure drop and tem­
for solid part, perature drop across the microchannel as a function of the number of
nodes is shown in Fig. 3 and it is found to be 750,000 nodes, reasonable
ks ∇2 Ts = 0 (4) ( )
error G2G− 1G1 ∗100 equal to 3% where G1 is the finest grid (0.75 × 106 )

2.3. Boundary conditions and G2 is the preceding grid (0.59 × 106 ).

For the flow boundary conditions, uniform velocity is applied at the
microchannel inlet and pressure outlet applied at the channel outlet. In
the present simulation, water is used as the working fluid. Prandtl
number is kept constant (Pr = 6.99) due to small temperature variation
and low value of Knudsen number [21,22]. The flow inside the channel
is assumed to be fully developed, and no-slip condition is applied at the
inner walls of microchannel. For thermal boundary conditions, a con­
stant temperature (Tw = 358 K) is applied at the base of the micro­
channel, and temperature (Tin = 300 K) applied at the inlet. Other
surfaces are assumed to be an adiabatic wall. The following assumptions
were made while conducting the simulation: 1.) Incompressible and
steady flow. 2.) Thermophysical properties are considered to be constant
at an average temperature. 3.) The losses due to radiation and body
The experiments conducted on rectangular and trapezoidal micro­
channels by Wu and Little [23] reported a higher friction factor than that
of the conventional theory, in the laminar regime; the transition from
laminar to turbulent occurred at Re = (350, 900) depending on surface
roughness. Kandlikar et al. [24] and Kim [25] reported the transition to
turbulence around Re = (800, 1500)) for the simple microchannel
depending on the surface roughness. In case of other kind of micro­
channel, like trapezoidal microchannel, Wu and Cheng [26] reported
that the transition initiate at Re ≥ 800. Lan et al. [27] showed that
adding of dimple and protrusions in channel, steady and laminar state is
maintained for Re ≤ 900 only. Reynolds number in the present analysis
is 200 (laminar), 900 (transition), and 2000 (turbulent), the realizable
k − ε turbulence model shown in eq. (5) and eq. (6) with enhanced wall
treatment, is used for the present analysis Shevchuk et al. [28]. The

3
K. Kumar and P. Kumar International Journal of Thermal Sciences 161 (2021) 106730

Fig. 3. Grid independence analysis showing a) temperature difference and b) pressure difference for simple microchannel.

model constants are C2ε = 1.9, σk = 1, σε = 1.2, Pre = 0.85, and Prw =
ρuin Dh
0.85 respectively. At Re = 200, the result obtained for both laminar and Re = (8)
μ
realizable k − ε turbulence model are compared and they are compa­
rable. The SIMPLE algorithm is applied for pressure-velocity coupling The friction factor (f) is given by:
and the aforesaid equations are solved with a second-order upwind
2Dh ΔP
differencing scheme. The standard scheme is used for pressure dis­ f= (9)
Lρu2in
cretization. The solutions are considered to be converged when the re­
sidual criterion reaches 1 × 10− 6 for continuity, momentum equations, The average heat transfer coefficient ( havg ) is expressed as:
and 1 × 10− 8 for the energy equation. qAf
[ ] havg = ( ) (10)
Ac Tw − Tf ,avg
∂ μ + σμkt ∂∂xkj
∂ρk ∂ρkuj
+ = + Pk + Pb − ρε − YM + Sk (5) where q, Af and Ac are heat flux per unit area, heated area and
∂t ∂xj ∂xj
convective heat transfer area respectively. Tw and Tf,avg is average wall
[ ]
temperature and average fluid temperature. The average Nusselt num­
∂ μ + σμεt ∂ε
∂ρε ∂ρεuj ∂xj ε2 ε ber (Nuavg ) is evaluated based on:
+ = + ρC1 Sε √̅̅̅̅̅ + C1ε C3ε Pb + Sε (6)
∂t ∂xj ∂xj k+ νε k
havg Dh
Nuavg = (11)
[ ] √̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅ kf
where, C1 = max 0.43, η
η+5 , η = Skε, and S = 2Sij Sij .
where kf is thermal conductivity of fluid. Performance factor (PF) is
evaluated as a ratio of gain in heat transfer against increase in friction
2.5. Data reduction factor used by many researchers [19,29].
Nuavg
The hydraulic diameter (Dh ) is calculated as: PF = (12)
fRe
2hR wR
Dh = (7)
h R + wR
Reynolds number (Re) is expressed as:

Fig. 4. Comparison of a) Temperature drop and b) Pressure variation across the microchannel versus Reynolds number for the numerical model and the experimental
analysis by Qu and Mudawar [20] and Kumar [19].

4
K. Kumar and P. Kumar International Journal of Thermal Sciences 161 (2021) 106730

Table 3 Gong et al. [31].

Grooves combination cases. The performance factor is plotted for all four cases as shown in Fig. 6.
Cases Description It can be observed that the performance factor for case-2 and case-3 is
higher as compared to the other two cases at all flow conditions. For
1 Microchannel with no grooves
2 Microchannel with grooves on the floor case-4, the more number of grooves enhances the heat transfer at the
3 Microchannel with grooves on the side walls expense of increasing the shear experienced by the fluid inside the
4 Microchannel with grooves on floor as well as side walls microchannel increasing the Po which decreases the overall perfor­
mance of the heat sink.
3. Results and discussion
3.3. Effect of depth variation of the groove on microchannel
3.1. Validation of numerical scheme
In this sub-section, the groove depth (h) is varied for cases 2 to 4 as
The present numerical model is validated with the data obtained shown in Table 3. The depth of the groove is varied from h ∈[20, 80] μm.
through the experiments conducted by the author Kumar [19] and Qu The effect of groove depth variation on Nuavg, Po, and PF at Re = 200,
and Mudawar [20]. The liquid is kept at Tin = 300 K. The pressure drop 900, and 2000 are discussed in detail in the following chapters.
and the temperature difference across the microchannel are measured
with varying Re. The present numerical model shows good agreement 3.3.1. Nusselt number
with the experimental data (maximum difference is around 1.5%) as A significant increase in Nusselt number (Nu) is observed with the
shown in Fig. 4. The current model is found suitable for simulation and addition of grooves. At the laminar flow regime Re = 200, the Nu for
same is extended for the further study of the effect of the grooves on the microchannel with grooves on the base (case - 2) remains constant with
flow and heat transfer characteristics of the heat sink. an increase in depth of the groove. For case - 3, the Nu remains constant
till h = 60 μm, then suddenly increases at h = 80 μm. The adverse region
3.2. Microchannel heat sink with grooves at h = 80 μm is higher as compared to the adverse pressure region at h =
20 μm, as shown in Fig. 7 a). Ridouane and Campo [32] observed that
The above numerical model is modified to incorporate grooves on the recirculation zone is important for the increase in heat transfer of the
the walls and floor of the microchannel heat sink. The depth of the microchannel heat sink, but at lower groove depth, the secondary flow
groove is kept constant at 20 μm. The four different configurations of or eddies does not exist inside the grooves. At h = 80 μm, the groove
grooves are analyzed as shown in Table 3. reaches its critical depth, and the adverse pressure region appears with
It has been established by Abouali and Baghernezhad [14] that arc the inception of secondary flow. Although the partial formation of an
grooves have a better effect on the heat removal rate as compared to
rectangular grooves. Fig. 5 shows the variation of the Poiseuille number
and Nusselt number at Re = 200, 900 and 2000, for the four cases as
shown in Table 3. The Poiseuille number relates to the resistance to the
flow inside the heat sink. The addition of grooves increases the shear
force acting on the fluid which increases the Poiseuille number as shown
in Fig. 5 a). Increasing the Re increases the pressure drop and the wall
shear which results in an increase in Poiseuille number with Re. The
case-2 and case-3 have comparable Po with simple microchannel and
case-4 has the maximum Po at all the flow conditions.
The Nuavg increases with an increase in Re for all the cases as shown
in Fig. 5 b). It can be observed that at Re = 200, the case-3, has the
maximum Nuavg but at Re = 900 and 2000, it is exhibited by case-4 at h
= 200 μm due to the formation of a thin boundary layer as well as the
entrance effect at a higher velocity which is also observed by Fedorov
and Viskanta [30] and Kumar [19]. It is found that the groove on the
wall improves Nusselt number by 119% compared to the simple
microchannel. The grooves expand the fluid and the surface available
for heat transfer increases which increases heat transfer between the
Fig. 6. Performance Factor variation with Re for all the cases.
wall of the microchannel and the fluid inside the groove highlighted by

Fig. 5. a) Variation of Po and b) Nuavg with Re for all the cases.

5
K. Kumar and P. Kumar
Fig. 7. a) Lateral pressure distribution and b) X-velocity contour at x = 43 mm for h = 40 μm and 80 μm at Re = 200 (case - 3).
Fig. 8. Variation of Nuavg with different groove depth at a) Re = 200, b) Re = 900, and c) Re = 2000.
adverse pressure region inside the groove initiates the inception of
pseudo secondary flow or eddies. For case - 4, increasing groove depth
decreases the heat transfer efficiency of the microchannel with an in­
crease in groove depth .
At transition regime Re = 900, the Nu is maximum for case - 4 at h =
20 μm, but it decreases with an increase in groove depth. The increase in
the groove depth should increase the heat transfer characteristics, but
due to the presence of pseudo secondary flow, it deteriorates the primary
flow forming a large stagnation region inside the groove. The example of
an increase in the stagnation region inside the groove due to an increase
in the h is shown in Fig. 7 b). The variation of Nusselt number (Nu) with
Reynolds number (Re) is shown in Fig. 8. The different value of Re (200,
900 and 2000) is based on laminar, transition and turbulent flow regime.
For case - 3, an increase in groove depth decreases the Nu as well, but
then a critical groove depth is observed at h = 60 μm for which the Nu is
maximum. For case - 2, the increase in groove depth decreases the Nu as
well, but no critical depth is observed for which the Nu is maximum.
At turbulent regime Re = 2000, the Nu decreases with an increase in
groove depth for all the cases. The high Reynolds number decreases the
effective heat transfer between the walls of the microchannel and the
primary core fluid, and increasing the depth with no secondary flow
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International Journal of Thermal Sciences 161 (2021) 106730
reduces the heat transfer between the fluid inside the groove and pri­
mary core fluid. Also, it is observed that increasing Re, results in an
increase in Nu at a constant h for all cases. Kumar [19] observed that
increasing Re results in the formation of a thin boundary layer near the
wall that enhances the heat transfer characteristics.
3.3.2. Poiseuille number
The flow inside the microchannel is assumed to be hydrodynamically
stable, and the Poiseuille number (Po) is constant for a developed flow.
The Po is calculated from the friction factor and Reynolds number as
shown in Eq. (9). At Re = 200, for case - 2, remains constant with an
increase in h. For case - 3, the Po decreases with an increase in h because
the pseudo secondary flow inside the groove acts to replace the slow-
flowing fluid near the wall with faster-moving fluid in the core of the
channel. So an increase in the groove depth reduces the transfer of fluid
near the wall and the primary flow which reduces the viscous friction. In
case - 4, a similar trend in the decrease of Po is observed. The pseudo
adverse pressure region in the groove facilitates the mixing of slow fluid
near the wall, and fast-moving core flow, increasing the viscous friction
in the microchannel for which the Po at the case - 4 is maximum as
compared to other cases. Xie et al. [33] found that the single groove on
K. Kumar and P. Kumar International Journal of Thermal Sciences 161 (2021) 106730

Fig. 9. Variation of Po with different groove depth at a) Re = 200, b) Re = 900, and c) Re = 2000.

Fig. 10. Temperature contour for case - 3 at x = 43 mm at groove depth a) h = 20 μm, and b) h = 80 μm.

Fig. 11. Variation of PF with different groove depth at a) Re = 200, b) Re = 900, and c) Re = 2000.

the wall has a little impact on the primary flow of the microchannel
which is also observed in the present analysis. At Re = 900 and 2000, the
case - 2 and 3 have similar Po, which indicates that the friction factor is
independent of groove depth in the limited range at higher Re. But for
case - 4, the increase in the groove depth increases the friction factor.
Hence it can be concluded that the orientation of the groove on the
surface of the microchannel has an evident effect on the friction factor.
At the laminar flow regime, the groove depth also affects the Po for all
the cases but at transition and turbulent regime, the groove depth does
not affect the Po for cases 2 and 3 except for case - 4.
3.3.3. Performance factor
The increase in heat transfer inside microchannel is mostly associ­
ated with the formation of secondary flow, recirculation zone boundary

7
K. Kumar and P. Kumar
layer separation and reattachment which in turn produces high friction
factor and pressure drop. Shevchuk et al. [28] reported a high heat
transfer due to secondary flows inside the ribbed microchannel. Simi­
larly, Samal and Moharana [29] observed the performance factor for the
case of recharging microchannel. This performance factor can be a
deciding parameter of the microchannel design for thermal performance
i.e. assessment of increase in pumping power against heat transfer
enhancement. The enhancement in the performance of the micro­
channel heat sink is quantified as the ratio of Nu and Po which is defined
in Eq (12). Fig. 10 shows the temperature contour for case - 3, at x = 43
mm for Re = 200. The Tf ,avg at h = 20 μm is 322.45 K and at h = 80 μm is
327 K. So, the groove depth increases the heat absorbed by the fluid
increasing the Nuavg , but at the same time, it increases the pressure
penalty and friction factor. In the Fig. 11, different groove depths are
analysed and plotted against the different flow regime. At Re = 200, the
PF increases with an increase in the h for all the cases, because of the
high heat transfer enhancement and a decrease in the viscous friction. At
higher Re, the transition and turbulent regime, for all the cases the PF
remains constant for cases 2 and 3. But for case - 4, at Re = 2000, the PF
decreases due to an increase in the friction factor and the decrease in Nu
with an increase in the h, as shown in Fig. 9c) ( Fig. 11(c).
4. Conclusions
A three-dimensional computational analysis is conducted to analyze
the effect of groove depth on hydrothermal characteristics of the
microchannel heat sink with different groove configurations. The sim­
ulations are performed at three different flow regimes i.e. laminar (Re =
200), transition (Re = 900) and turbulent (Re = 2000). The different
configurations in the study are simple microchannel, microchannel with
grooves on the base, microchannel with grooves on both the sidewalls
and microchannel with grooves on both the sidewalls as well as the
floor. The groove depth is varied from h = 20 μm to h = 80 μm for all
different configurations. The main conclusions form the analysis are
summarized below:
• The groove in the microchannel results in the formation of pseudo
secondary flow, which decreases the viscous friction at the laminar
region but higher Reynolds number, the increase in the groove depth
has no effect on the friction factor for case 2 and 3 except case - 4,
where a critical depth at h = 40 μm has a minimum friction factor.
• The addition of groove on the floor and both the side walls case-4
increases the Nusselt number by 119% as compared to the simple
microchannel. It also increases the Poiseuille number by 145%.
• At higher Reynolds number, the increase in groove depth decreases
the effective heat transfer, which implies that groove with small
depth is more effective for microchannel with grooves on both the
sidewalls and floor.
• The microchannel with grooves on the floor has no effect on the
Performance factor with the increase in groove depth.
• The addition of grooves on more surface of the microchannel in­
creases the overall heat transfer, but it also increases the friction
penalty, which reduces the performance factor of the microchannel.
So the microchannel with symmetric grooves (case - 3) has the
highest performance factor at all flow regimes.
• From the above analysis, it can be concluded that the groove
configuration has a major effect on the performance of the micro­
channel and microchannel with symmetric grooves on the sidewalls
performed better for the present flow conditions i.e. Re = 200, 900,
and 2000 and geometric parameters i.e. h = 20 μm, 40 μm, 60 μm,
and 80 μm.
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International Journal of Thermal Sciences 161 (2021) 106730
Declaration of competing interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial
interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence
the work reported in this paper.
Data availability
Data will be made available on request.
Acknowledgements
The authors like to acknowledge the SRMIST Management for their
consistent support for research.
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