Heat transfer enhancement due to pulsating flow in a microchannel heat sink

Heat sinks with liquid forced convection in microchannels are targeted for cooling microelectronic devices with a high dissipated power density. Given the inherent stability problems associated with two-phase microchannel heat transfer, this paper investigates experimentally the potential for enhancing single-phase convection cooling rates by applying pulsating flow. To this end, a pulsator device is developed which allows independent continuous control of pulsation amplitude and frequency. For a single microchannel geometry and a range of parameters (steady and pulsating Reynolds number, Womersley number), experimental results are presented for the overall heat transfer enhancement compared to the steady flow case. Enhancement factors up to 40% are observed for the investigated parameter range (50 Lt Re Lt 400, 35 Lt Re_p Lt 225,2 Lt Wo Lt 17).