Heat Transfer Enhancement by Insertion of Vortex Generators in Electronic Chip Cooling: A Numerical Study

The present work represents a 2-D numerical investigation of forced convection heat transfer over three electronic blocks (silicon chip) in an inline arrangement with elliptical shaped vortex generators (VG-copper made) placed on top of the channel, for a range of Reynolds numbers. The block is prescribed with a 1,000 W/m² heat flux due to heating of the electronic components installed in the CPU casing. The results show that, vortex generators could effectively enhance the heat transfer in the channel. Subsequently, the effects of Reynolds number (from 500 to 1050), the number of vortex generators (baseline, 1, 2 and 3), aspect ratio of heated block (0.125, 0.15, 0.22), and aspect ratio of vortex generators (0.3125, 0.4, 0.5) on the heat transfer and fluid flow characteristics are examined. The characteristics of the performance parameters are studied numerically with the aid of computational fluid dynamics (CFD). The 3 VG demonstrates nearly 28.35% enhancement of Nusselt number compared to the 1 VG case at Re = 479. The change in pressure drop is less at low Reynolds number compared to higher Reynolds number respective to other parameters. Increasing the aspect ratio of the block increases the convection coefficient while decreasing aspect ratio of VG increases heat transfer coefficient. This enhancement is less significant for the third block as the cooling effect is predominant close to the channel inlet. Increasing consecutive distance between the blocks, enhances the heat transfer coefficient with the penalty of additional pressure drop. However, parametric studies are conducted for the maximum heat transfer enhancement.