Thermal management in a phase change material-based microchannel heat sink manifold system for cooling electronic boards

• Thermal performance of latent heat storage MCHS investigated. • Five heat flux, three Re number and free and forced convection modes studied. • Re number increase has the best cooling effect at highest heat flux. • In natural convection mode the PCM board reduces heat sink temperature by 72 %. • In forced convection, the PCM reduces the mean temperature by 78 %. The growth of technology and the development of electronic devices made the need for efficient thermal management. By the ability of latent thermal energy storage, the application of phase change materials (PCMs) for cooling electronic boards has been investigated. The heat sink is an air-cooled micro heat sink cooling system (MHCS) with the possibility of embedding the PCM board. A type of metal-based paraffin is the PCM and free and forced modes of convective cooling studied numerically. Five input heat fluxes and three Reynolds ( Re ) numbers were investigated and the system performance was analyzed. The results show the significant influence of PCM on the control of the EC temperature; the reduction of heat sink temperature by 72 % and 78 % in natural and forced convection modes respectively, are the results of employing PCM in MHCS. It was shown that the best result of PCM employment in forced convection mode is at the lowest Re number. Furthermore, the Re number increase has the best effect on cooling efficiency at the highest heat flux. The results of this study could help in justifying the application of PCM from technical and economic viewpoints.