Heat transfer enhancement in oblique finned curved microchannel using hybrid nanofluid

The significant development of power converters in electric vehicles demands higher energy consumption and in turn larger heat generation. To prevent overheating of power converters, a newly designed curved microchannel is being developed with different cooling fluids. The objective of present experimental study is to analyze the heat transfer characteristics of oblique finned curved microchannel heat sink (MCHS) with various working fluids like Deionized water, nanofluid and hybrid nanofluid. Here heat sink has been designed with cross sectional area of 80 x 53 mm2. The DI water, Al2O3/water nanofluid and Al2O3+CuO/water hybrid nanofluid was utilized separately with rate of mass flow varied between 0.1 and 0.5 lpm maintaining steady heat flux of 25.5 kW/m2. Investigational output exposed that the rate of heat transfer, PEC and fall in pressure for the curved MCHS enhanced by 11.98%, 16.5% and 30.1% respectively in comparison to the heat sink which has straight channel. Also using hybrid nanofluid, the rate of heat transfer increased by 3.5% and 2.1%with curved MCHS in com-parison to water and nanofluid. This is endorsed to the secondary flow generated by curved MCHS which improved the rate of heat transfer significantly. Overall, the curved MCHS with hybrid nanofluid is suggested as a preferred cooling medium for power converter in electric vehicles.