Advanced micro-heat exchangers for high heat flux

Three micro-heat exchangers for use in a liquid cooling system with a long offset strip, short offset strip, and chevron flow path based on the traditional heat transfer enhancement concepts were designed and tested. A straight channel heat exchanger was also made for comparison. The liquid crystal thermography method described by Lin and Yang (2005) was used to observe the flow and temperature distributions in the micro-heat exchangers. The test results show that the chevron channel heat exchanger provides the lowest thermal resistance. However, its pressure drop is also the highest, approximately five times higher than that for other three heat exchangers. The offset strip heat exchangers provide better thermal performance than does the straight channel heat exchanger. The performance of the heat exchanger with the shorter strip is better than that of heat exchanger with longer strip. From the above results, all of the three micro-heat exchangers with conventional heat transfer enhancement showed less thermal resistance than the straight channel heat exchanger. The conventional heat transfer techniques may be effectively applied in the high-flux micro-heat exchanger design.