Experimental and numerical examinations of thermofluids characteristics of double-layer microchannel heat sinks with deflectors

Abstract This study employs deflectors to enhance the thermal characteristics of double-layer microchannel heat sinks (DMHS) through both numerical simulations and experimental verifications. The deflectors were introduced into the DMHS to improve the performance of the traditional straight DMHS. Three 3D-printed test samples was manufactured for experiments, and it is found that the numerical simulations are in line with the experimental measurements. The temperature control of the substrate temperature by using deflectors is very obvious, and the highest temperature of the substrate is significantly reduced. The peak value of the temperature on substrate is 7 K lower than that of traditional DMHS. The experimental study and numerical simulation both show that the heat transfer enhancement of the deflector structure is very pronounced. Even though the proposed deflector yields higher pressure drop penalty, the performance factor that combines the influence of heat transfer and pressure drop penalty still shows that the proposed DMHS with deflectors outperforms considerably that of traditional DMHS.