NUMERICAL SIMULATION OF A MICROCHANNEL HEAT EXCHANGER USING STEADY-STATE AND TIME-DEPENDENT SOLVERS

Microchannel heat exchangers are employed for thermal management of electronic devices, IC circuits, etc. Simulation of microchannel heat exchangers using solver with the capability of dealing with steady-state and time-dependent conditions is carried out. The solver - COMSOL - was developed by COMSOL Multiphysics, Inc. using the finite element method. The pressure drop and heat transfer are two of the most important parameters in these devices. In this study, the results obtained from the numerical analyses were in good agreement with those obtained from the papers. In addition, using the same heat exchanger configuration, results obtained from numerical simulations of pressure drop and overall thermal resistance using the COMSOL indicated that those parameters are lower for the cases with parallel-flow than those with the counter-flow.