Flow and heat transfer performance of a mini-channel radiator with cylinder disturbed flow

Mini-channel heat sinks have relatively low Nusselt number due to small Reynolds number. For heat transfer enhancement purpose, a mini-channel radiator with cylinder disturbed flow was proposed. The disturbed flow was created by a circular cylinder placed horizontally in front of channels entrance. The performance of heat transfer and pressure drop with/without disturbed flow was studied experimentally. It was found that the friction factor of mini-channel flow was larger than that of the macro-channel flow due to larger surface roughness, and the pressure drop caused by cylinder disturbed flow was less than 5%. It also concluded that the average Nusselt number increases with augment of Reynolds and Prandtl number. The Nusselt number correlations as the function of the Reynolds and Prandtl number were given for evaluation the heat removal performance of similar heat radiators. There is an inflexion point in the empirical formulas when the channel length equals to the thermal entrance length. For the mini-channels heat radiators with disturbed flow, the inflexion Reynolds number is larger than that of without disturbed flow. Due to the flow pulsing caused by circular cylinder placed in front of channels entrance, the thermal entrance length increases. On the other hand, for both mini-channels with or without disturbed flow, the thermal resistance increases with the decrease of pressure drop. (C) 2011 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.