An experimental investigation on the effect of relative waviness on performance of minichannel heat sinks using water and nanofluids.

An experimental investigation was conducted to study the effect of relative waviness (amplitude-to-wavelength ratio) on heat transfer and pressure drop characteristics of wavy minichannel array heat sinks. Hydrodynamically fully developed flows of de-ionized (DI) water, and 0.5% and 0.8% concentrations of Al₂O₃/water nanofluid were introduced into two heat sinks, each with an array of 15 rectangular wavy minichannels of amplitude-to-wavelength ratio of 0.100 and 0.133. The minichannels had a width of 0.9 mm and a depth of 1.3 mm and were machined on a 30 × 30 mm² Aluminum substrate of 11 mm thickness. Reynolds number was varied from 700 to 2300 and a constant heat flux of 45,000 W/m² was applied. Analysis of experimental results suggests increases in both Nusselt number and pressure drop with an increase in relative waviness in the laminar and transitional flow regimes. A maximum performance factor (PF) of 2.6 is achieved for a Reynolds number of 1900 using DI water in the wavy minichannels of higher relative waviness. Temperature distributions and new Nusselt number correlations for both geometries are also presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]