Influence of the manufacturing technology on microchannel structure efficiency

The paper presents investigations of different copper microchannel structure manufacturing technologies. Both additive and subtractive techniques are taken into consideration. Performed tests show that due to the chosen material and dimensions only wire cutting process and milling process can be selected. The use of these methods results in differences in obtained microchannel shape. Further, the analysis of microchannel shape, various geometrical and thermal parameters and their influence on cooling abilities of the microchannel structures are presented. It is shown that the geometry resulting from chosen manufacturing technology may impact the overall thermal performance of the copper microstructures, especially for heat transfer coefficients below 5 W/cm2 K. The numerical analysis has been conducted with the aid of ANSYS software.