An Experimental Study on the Dependency of Thermal Resistance of Additively Manufactured Micro-Channel Heat Sinks on Channel Cross-Sections

Cooling by micro-channel heat sink transfers excess heat flux in electrical devices and increases their functional capacity, reliability, and life span. In this paper, AlSi10Mg powders were employed to create four micro-channel heat sinks with cross-sections including square, rectangle, circle, and ellipse with an additive manufacturing method. To investigate the impact of micro-channel heat sink cross-sectional geometry on thermal resistance, Taguchi’s L25 orthogonal array was utilized. Reynolds number and electric power were selected to be the input parameters. The experimental tests were conducted using an experimental setup and distilled water as the working fluid in the laminar flow regime. The results obtained from the experimental tests indicated that in the range of electric power from 4 to 12 W and Reynolds numbers of 50, 100, 150, 200, and 250, the micro-channel heat sink with a square cross-section exhibits the highest heat transfer performance. Finally, an analysis of variance was conducted to study the impact of the Reynolds number and electric power factors on thermal resistance. The findings revealed the significant effect of electric power on thermal resistance in micro-channel heat sinks compared to the Reynolds number in the laminar regime. Additionally, a comparison was made with other available results.