The effect of viscous dissipation on laminar nanofluid flow in a microchannel heat sink

摘要

The present article focuses on analytical and numerical study on the effect of viscous dissipation when nanofluid is used as the coolant in a microchannel heat sink (MCHS). The nanofluid is made from CuO nanoparticles and water. To analyse the MCHS, a modified Darcy equation for the fluid and two-equation model for heat transfer between fluid and solid sections are employed in porous media approach. In addition, to deal with nanofluid heat transfer, a model based on the Brownian motion of nanoparticles is used. The model evaluates the thermal conductivity of nanofluid considering the thermal boundary resistance, nanoparticle diameter, volume fraction, and the fluid temperature. At first, the effects of particle volume fraction on temperature distribution and overall heat transfer coefficient are investigated with and without considering viscous dissipation. After that, the influence of different channel aspect ratios and porosities is studied. The results show that for nanofluid flow in microchannels, the viscous dissipation can be neglected for low volume fractions and aspect ratios only. Finally, the effect of porosity and Brinkman number on the overall Nusselt number is studied, where asymptotic behaviour of the Nusselt number is observed and discussed from the energy balance point of view.