Experimental Thermal and Fluid Science 34 (2010) 1409–1414

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Experimental Thermal and Fluid Science

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/etfs

Experiments on the transient heat transfer of minichannel heat sink under high
heat flux density in an enclosed loop
Zhiqiang Zhou, Xianghua Xu *, Xingang Liang
Key Laboratory for Thermal Science and Power Engineering of Ministry of Education, School of Aerospace, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: The experiments are carried out to study the transient heat transfer characteristics of a minichannel heat
Received 24 May 2010 sink under high heat flux density that varies from 150 W/cm2 to 200 W/cm2, in an enclosed loop. The heat
Received in revised form 23 June 2010 flux is supplied by the ethyne flame. The average rate of the cooling water is from 1.00 m/s to 1.86 m/s.
Accepted 1 July 2010
The temperature rise of the heated surface and the temperature rise of the cooling water are measured.
The results show that the temperature rise of the heated top surface rises quickly at the startup period of
heating, and then increases slowly. The variation of the top surface temperature is similar to the voltage
Keywords:
in the RC circuit. The surface temperature is a function of thermal resistance and thermal capacity of the
Minichannel
Heat sink
heat sink. The temperature of the cooling water at outlet also rises quickly at the startup period of heat-
Transient ing, and then becomes stable. The temperature increases are related to the heat flux density and the rate
High heat flux of the cooling water. There is a time delay between the temperature rise of the inlet cooling water and the
startup of heating. This delay is related to the length of the enclosed loop and the rate of the cooling
water. The pressure drop across the heat sink decreases slightly with time at high heat flux since the
water viscosity reduces with the increasing temperature.
Ó 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
The increase in the integration density of electronic devises
leads to a significant rise in heat flux density. The performance of
the electronic device will be degraded and the device could even
be damaged if the heat cannot be removed effectively. Traditional
air-cooling techniques could not meet the demand of high heat flux
density and researchers have been seeking new methods that can
remove heat flux of high density. The micro- or mini-channel heat
sink that was first introduced by Tuckerman and Pease [1] in 1981
has received considerable attention of researchers [2–9], but the
majority of previous studies were concerned with the steady-state
behavior of these devices. In fact, in many applications, the high
power devices are not always working at steady state. They often
run periodically or at an unsteady situation instead. For instance,
Viswanath et al. [10] demonstrated a variation of the device power
with time. The device power is not the same for different applica-
tions and there is an abrupt change over brief time intervals or over
long durations. It is necessary to investigate the transient behavior
of the heat sink for the high power devices and design an efficient
system to control the temperature rise of the devices. Most of the
related investigations were done by using numerical simulation
[11,12] because of the difficulty in manufacturing the micro-chan-
* Corresponding author.
E-mail address: xxh@tsinghua.edu.cn (X. Xu).
nel heat sink and producing a high heat flux density power, and
few literatures [13] were reported on experiments. The cooling
area or surface area of the heat sink studied was usually small.
Hence, there is a need for the experiments with larger surface area
at higher heat flux density. The present article reports an experi-
mental investigation on the transient thermal behavior of a mini-
channel heat sink in an enclosed loop and a theoretical model is
given to describe the temperature behavior based on the thermal
and electrical analogy.
2. The experimental system
2.1. The test module
The test module consists of a minichannel heat sink and a hous-
ing, as shown in Fig. 1a. The balelite housing contains pressure taps
both upstream and downstream of the minichannel heat sink. Each
tap has a relatively large space connecting to the minichannels that
helps to evenly distribute the flow between minichannels. Two
absolute pressure transducers are connected to the tap holes at
the inlet and outlet to measure the inlet and outlet pressures,
respectively. Also located in the inlet and outlet pressure taps are
two T-Type thermocouples to measure the inlet and outlet temper-
atures of the water, respectively. The minichannel heat sink is fab-
ricated from a single block of oxygen-free copper, as shown in
Fig. 1b. The block is 70 mm wide, 90 mm long and 6 mm thick.

0894-1777/$ - see front matter Ó 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.expthermflusci.2010.07.001
1410 Z. Zhou et al. / Experimental Thermal and Fluid Science 34 (2010) 1409–1414

Nomenclature

A area heat inputted, m2 t0 critical instant after which the quasi-steady begins, s
An total area of minichannels, m2 u velocity, m/s
C thermal capacity of the heat sink, J K1 DT temperature rise, K
cp specific heat of the test fluid, J kg1 K1
dn minichannel hydraulic diameter, mm Greek symbols
h heat transfer coefficient, W m2 K1 m kinematic viscosity, m2 s1
kf thermal conductivity of the cooling water q fluid density, kg m3
M total mass of the water, kg g thermal insulation efficiency
MV volume flow rate, m3 s1
Nu Nusselt number Subscripts
Q heating power, W ave average
q heat flux density, W m2 in minichannel inlet
R thermal resistance, K W1 out minichannel outlet
Re Reynolds number s top surface of heat sink
T temperature, K cond conduction
t time, s conv convection

The minichannels are machined into the bottom surface of the
block by a precision wire electrode cutting technique with an area
surface of 40.0 mm wide and 50.0 mm long. There are 39 rectangu-
lar minichannels equidistantly spaced within 40 mm. The channels
have a cross-sectional dimension of 0.5 mm in width and 3 mm in
depth. An O-ring in the housing behaves as a leak proof seal. Below
the heat sink top surface there are 12 holes with a diameter of
1 mm which are drilled from the side wall of the heat sink to the
center plane. Twelve T-Type thermocouples with a 0.5 mm bead
diameter are inserted into these holes to measure the temperature
distribution of the heat sink.
2.2. The flow loop
As shown in Fig. 2, the flow loop is constructed to supply dis-
tilled water to the heat sink at the desired pressure, temperature,
and flow rate. The water is pumped from a liquid reservoir by a
vane pump, and then routed through a rotameter for volume flow
rate measurement. The volume flow rate is controlled by the con-
trol valve. The water is then conducted through the test sink mod-
ule where it removes the heat supplied to the heat sink. Finally, the
water returns to the reservoir where it is mixed with the water left
in the reservoir. The length of the loop is about 3 m. The mass of
the water is 2 kg. The water mainly gains heat in the test module
though it exchanges heat with the surrounding only by natural
convection. There should a chiller that dissipates the heat from
the heat source for an enclosed cooling loop. We do not design
such a chiller in our experiments. Instead, we treat the heat loss
into the surrounding due to the loop pipe, water reservoir, etc.,
as the function of a chiller.
The difficulty of the experiment is how to heat the sink at high
heat flux density and high power. To solve the problem, the burn-
ing flame of ethyne is used. The heating power can be varied by
changing the mass supply of ethyne and oxygen, and be calculated
from the temperature increase of water by
Q ¼ cp MV qðT out;water  T in;water Þ ð1Þ
where cp is the specific heat at constant pressure of the water
(4182 J/kg K); MV is the volume flow rate; q is the density of water
(988.2 kg m3); Tout,water and Tin,water are the water temperatures at
the outlet and inlet respectively. The pressure of ethyne and oxygen
containers almost does not change during the heating period, so the
heat source is stable. The total powers are controlled at 3000 W,
3500 W and 4000 W, respectively.
The volume flow rate through the minichannels is between
2.63 L/min and 6.53 L/min, and the Reynolds number of the mini-
channels is defined as:
uav e dn
Re ¼ ð2Þ
m
where dn is the hydraulic diameter of the channel whose value
is 0.587 mm, m is the kinetic viscosity coefficient of water, uave
is the average value of velocity of water in the minichannels,
that is,
MV
uav e ¼ ð3Þ
An
where An is the total cross-section area of the minichannels whose
value is 0.5 mm  3 mm  39.

Fig. 1. Test module (a) and minichannel heat sink (b).

 Z. Zhou et al. / Experimental Thermal and Fluid Science 34 (2010) 1409–1414 1411

Fig. 2. Schematic of flow loop.

The Nusselt number of the heat sink is defined as:

hdn
Nu ¼ ð4Þ
kf

where kf is the thermal conductivity of the cooling water, h is the

heat transfer coefficient of the minichannels which can be obtained
by
Q
h¼ ð5Þ
ðT s  T in ÞA
where Ts is the temperature of the heat sink’s top surface, A is the
area where heat is input whose size is 40 mm  50 mm.

2.3. The experimental uncertainty

The volume flow rate is measured by a rotameter whose range

is 0.1–0.6 m3/h with an accuracy of 0.5%. The uncertainty of tem-
peratures measured with thermocouples is ±0.5 °C. The size of
the minichannel is measured by microscope whose uncertainty is
0.01 mm. The length of the heat sink is measured by vernier caliper
with resolution of 0.1 mm. The range of the pressure transducer is
0–25 kPa with an uncertainty of 1%. The uncertainty for time is
±0.01 s, for the water mass is ±0.01 kg. By using the procedures de-
scribed in GUM [14], the uncertainty of Q is below 7.5%, the uncer-
tainty of temperature rise that is defined as the difference between
the measured temperature and the temperature of the water be-
fore heating is below 3%, and the uncertainty of Nu is derived to
be 10%.
3. The results and discussion
In order to simplify the results, the time at which heating begins
is defined as initial instant. The performances such as the temper-
ature and pressure loss of the heat sink are discussed.
3.1. The temperature characteristics of the top surface of the heat sink
The variation of the temperature rise of the top surface of the
heat sink with time is shown in Fig. 3, where the heating power
is 3 kW. The discrete points are the data measured by the experi-
ments. The initial increase rate of the temperature rise with time
is very high during the startup period. Then it decreases continu-
ously with time until it approaches a constant. In this duration,
most of the input heat is absorbed by water passing through the
minichannels. The higher the velocity is, the lower the temperature
rise is, and the shorter the time is when the increase rate in tem-
perature rise becomes small and constant. In all the duration of
Fig. 3. Variation of the top surface temperature with time (Q = 3 kW).
heating, the temperature variation can be divided into a transient
period and a quasi-steady period. The inputted heat is mainly ab-
sorbed by the water during the quasi-steady period while the
inputted heat is absorbed by the heat sink and the water during
the transient period. In the case of steady heating, the heat flux
density and the thermal resistance of the heat sink determine
the temperature rise, while the heat capacity of the heat sink also
takes effect in the case of transient heating, just like the role of the
capacitance in the RC circuit. Based on the similarity between heat
transfer and electricity, the RC model can be tried to describe the
relation between the temperature rise, the heat flux density, the
thermal resistance and the thermal capacity during the transient
period. During the quasi-steady period, the temperature rise can
be described by quasi-steady model that considers the tempera-
ture rise of water at the inlet due to the heating, the mass and
the specific heat of water, and the thermal insulation efficiency
of the flow loop. The critical instant after which the temperature
variation can be regarded as quasi-steady is defined as t0, whose
value is about five times of the time constant of the RC model.
The temperature rise at the top surface of the heat sink in all the
heating duration can be described as
t
DT s ¼ qRð1  eRC Þ t < t 0
ð6Þ
DT s ¼ qR þ g McQ p ðt  t 0 Þ t P t0
where DTs is the temperature rise of the top surface, q is the heat
flux density, R is the thermal resistance of the sink, C is the thermal
capacity of the heat sink, t is time of heating, M is the mass of the
1412 Z. Zhou et al. / Experimental Thermal and Fluid Science 34 (2010) 1409–1414

water used in the experiment, g is the thermal insulation efficiency
of the flow loop which is 0.72 for the system. The total heat inputted
into the water from the sink can be obtained by multiplying Eq. (1)
with the heating time. The heat energy of the system after heating
can be calculated from its equilibrium temperature. The difference
between the final heat energy of the system after heating and the
initial heat energy before heating plus the heat loss of the system
during the heating should be equal to the total heat from the flame.
The thermal insulation efficiency is obtained from the net increase
in heat energy of the system and the heat energy obtained from the
flame during heating.
The product of q and R is equivalent to that of the voltage of
supply power in RC circuit.
According to the experimental data, the thermal resistance and
the thermal capacity of the heat sink can be obtained. It is noted
that the thermal resistance is different but the thermal capacity
is almost same when velocity of the cooling water is changed. This
means that the thermal capacity is only related to the material and
the structure dimensions of the heat sink. The thermal resistance of
heat sink, according to [15], is the combination of the conductive
thermal resistance of heat sink and the convection thermal resis-
tance between the heat sink and the cooling water,
R ¼ Rcond þ Rconv
where the thermal conductive resistance Rcond is only determined
by the material and structure dimensions of the heat sink [14]
whose value is 0.0103 K W1 in the present research. The convec-
tion thermal resistance Rconv is a function of Re number and the
structure dimensions of the heat sink. The convection thermal resis-
tance can be expressed as
rise very well. The difference between the calculated value and
the experimental data is within ±3 °C.
Fig. 4 presents the effect of the heating power on the tempera-
ture rise of the top surface when the velocity of the cooling water is
1.86 m/s. The consistency between the experiment data and RC
model also proves the applicability of the RC and quasi-steady
model. The heating power has no effect on the thermal resistance
and the thermal capacity, but makes the temperature rise different.
The temperature rise increases with the increasing heating power.
The change of the heating power takes the same effect as that of
the voltage in the RC circuit.
3.2. The inlet temperature rise of the cooling water
The variation of the temperature rise of the cooling water at in-
let with time is shown in Fig. 5. The heating power is 3 kW. The
temperature rise does not increase immediately when heating is
started. The time delay is caused by the distance between the out-
let and the inlet through the loop. The cooling water at outlet takes
a time to reach the inlet. The time delay will be shorter when the
velocity of the cooling water is larger. The time delay is about 4 s
when the velocity is 1.86 m/s, and it is approximately 7 s when
ð7Þ the velocity is 1.00 m/s. Increasing water velocity makes the cool-
ing water carry more heat due to the improvement in heat transfer
coefficient. Hence, the inlet temperature rise increases with the in-

1 dn
Rconv ¼ ¼ ð8Þ
hA kf ANu
According to the experimental data, the thermal resistance can
be obtained:

76:264dn 0:6319
R¼ Re þ 0:0103 ð9Þ
Akf
The above correlation can be used when the Reynolds number is
in the range of 1000–2000 and the error is below 20%.
The variation of the temperature rise with time calculated using
Eqs. (2), (6), and (9) at the different water velocity is shown in
Fig. 3 and is compared with the experimental data. The RC and Fig. 5. Variation of the temperature rise of the cooling water at inlet with time
quasi-steady model can describe the variation of the temperature (Q = 3 kW).

Fig. 4. Effect of the heating power on the temperature rise of the top surface Fig. 6. Effect of the heating power on the temperature rise of the cooling water at
(uave = 1.86 m/s). inlet (uave = 1.86 m/s).
 Z. Zhou et al. / Experimental Thermal and Fluid Science 34 (2010) 1409–1414
Fig. 7. Variation of the temperature rise of the cooling water at outlet with time
(Q = 3 kW).
crease of the velocity. The delay is also dependent on the amount
of water in the reservoir. The final temperature rise is related to
the heating duration, the heating power and the amount of water
in the reservoir.
Fig. 6 presents the effect of the heating power on the tempera-
ture rise of the cooling water at the inlet with the same velocity.
The time delay is constant with the same velocity. The higher heat-
ing power makes the inlet temperature higher because the water
absorbs more heat when the power is larger.
3.3. The outlet temperature rise of the cooling water
Fig. 7 shows the variation of the outlet temperature rise of the
cooling water. The heating power is 3 kW. The outlet temperature
rise of the cooling water is obvious less than that at top surface of
the sink. At first two seconds, the temperature increases rapidly,
and then keeps increasing linearly. The increase of the temperature
rise with time is mainly caused by the increase of the inlet temper-
ature of the cooling water after the initial stage. Increasing the
water velocity makes the outlet temperature rise smaller because
high velocity shortens the duration of the cooling water passing
the minichannels, and reduces the heat absorbed by the water.
Fig. 8 demonstrates the effect of the heating power on the tem-
perature rise of the cooling water at outlet. The velocity of the cool-
ing water is 1.86 m/s. Raising the heating power leads to the
increases in the top surface temperature, the temperature differ-
Fig. 8. Effect of the heating power on the temperature rise of the cooling water at
outlet (uave = 1.86 m/s).
1413
Fig. 9. Pressure loss of the flow at different velocity (Q = 3 kW).
ence between the cooling water and the top surface of the heat
sink, and there is more heat translated into the cooling water
and the outlet temperature is increased.
3.4. The pressure loss
Fig. 9 shows the pressure loss of the flow at different velocity,
the heating power is 3 kW. It can be noted that the pressure loss
decreases slightly with time at each water velocity. The reason is
that the inlet water temperature becomes larger with time and
its viscosity coefficient become smaller. After the heat stops at
about 40 s or so, the temperature of water contacting the heating
surface drops quickly and the viscosity coefficient increases, so
the pressure loss becomes larger again.
4. Conclusions
The minichannel heat sink is investigated experimentally under
high heat flux density in an enclosed loop. A detail description of
the temperature rise of the heat sink and the cooling water at inlet
and outlet are presented and discussed, as well as the pressure
drop. Major findings from the research are concluded in the
following.
The temperature rise of the heat sink increases rapidly during
the startup period of heating. In the duration of the startup period,
the temperature rise is related to the heat capacity of the sink and
the velocity of the cooling water. The lower velocity the longer
duration is. The increase in the heating power results in larger tem-
perature rise. After the startup period, the temperature increase re-
duces continuously with time until it approaches a constant.
There is a time delay between inlet temperature rise of cooling
water and the startup of heating. The delay is dominated by the
length of the flow loop, the velocity of the cooling water and the
water in the reservoir.
The initial increase rate of temperature rise of the cooling water
at outlet is very high, but it keeps a constant soon. The outlet tem-
perature rise of the cooling water decreases with the increase of
the cooling water velocity, and increases with the increasing heat-
ing power.
The RC and quasi-steady model is applied to fit the experimen-
tal curve of the temperature rise. It is found that such a model can
describe the temperature rise of the heat sink very well.
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