Numerical Simulation of Flow and Conjugate Heat Transfer in a Microchannel for Electronics Cooling

Microchannel heat sinks are minute flow channels fabricated onto the back of the thin silicon chip substrate with hydraulic diameter ranging from 10 μm to 103 μm. These heat sinks are characterized by extremely high surface area per unit volume of working fluid and low thermal resistance. This paper documents the modeling methodologies and the results of the numerical investigation on a laminar forced convection in a heated microchannel. A conjugate heat transfer model was set up using a commercial software STAR-CD to investigate the localized flow and heat transfer in a microchannel. The model was then solved using typical flow, heat transfer and dimensional parameters. The temperature distributions in both the solid and fluid region and the flow field in terms of velocity and pressures were shown and discussed with the help of the numerical simulation.