Study on the performance of a miniscale channel heat sink with Y-shaped unit channels based on entransy analysis

Liquid-cooled miniscale channel heat sink has been widely used in electronic chip cooling due to its characteristics of energy saving, high heat dissipation, and easy integration. Although the cooling performance of the miniscale channel heat sinks can be further improved by the optimization of channel structures, the study on the characteristics of the heat transfer process not only help to improve the cooling performance, but also provide the guiding significance for the optimization of heat sinks. This paper conducts an experimental study on the optimization of the heat transfer performance for the proposed liquid-cooled miniscale channel heat sink with Y-shaped unit channels (MCHSYC) based on the constructal law and entransy theory. The models of entransy transfer are developed for the MCHSYC to analyze the effects of the flowrate and heat flux on the entransy dissipation rate, entransy dissipation-based thermal resistance, and efficiency of entransy. And then the models to determine the optimal flowrate of the MCHSYC is proposed by considering both heat transfer ability and average surface temperature. The results show that the optimal heat dissipation performance of the MCHSYC is obtained under the flowrate of 0.055 m³/h by considering both the amount of heat transfer and the heat transfer ability. Furthermore, a higher heat transfer ability and a lower average surface temperature of the MCHSYC can be achieved simultaneously from the estimated optimal range of flowrate using the proposed optimization models.