Heat transfer enhancement by dynamic corrugated heat exchanger wall: Numerical study

A new concept of heat exchanger at sub-millimeter scale is proposed for applications in cooling on-board electronics devices, in which the quality of the exchanges between fluid and wall is very critical. In the proposed system, the upper wall of the channel is deformed dynamically to obtain a sinusoidal wave on this surface. The lower wall is exposed to constant heat flux simulating the imprint of an electronic component. A systematic 3-D numerical study in transient regime on the different deformation parameters allowed obtaining both the pumping characteristics and the heat transfer characteristics of the system. It was observed that the dynamic deformation of the wall induces a significant pumping effect. The intensification of the heat transfer is very important even for highly degraded waveforms, although the pumping efficiency is reduced in this case.