International Journal of Thermal Sciences 186 (2023) 108148

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International Journal of Thermal Sciences

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

Enhanced thermal performance by spatial chaotic mixing in a

saw-like microchannel
Qun Han, Zhaoxuan Liu, Wenming Li *
Key Laboratory of Energy Thermal Conversion and Control of Ministry of Education, School of Energy and Environment, Southeast University, Nanjing, 210096, PR
China

A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T

Keywords: Convection heat transfer in microchannel is an alternative cooling technique for electronic devices. But the long-
Saw-like microchannel lasting dominant laminar flow seriously inhibits the further enhancement of single-phase convection. In this
Convection heat transfer work, a saw-like microchannel configuration is proposed to improve convective heat transfer by substantially
Fluid mixing
enhancing spatial fluid mixing and significantly interrupting boundary layer. The heat transfer and hydraulic
Diodic performance
performance of this configuration are numerically investigated in opposite directions. The diodic performance is
also studied by comparing the pressure drop and Nusselt number (Nu) in the forward and backward directions.
Parametric study is conducted to investigate the roles of channel width and bifurcation angle on fluid flow and
convection. Finally, convective heat transfer in both directions is significantly enhanced in this saw-like
microchannel owing to the intensified spatial fluid mixing. Another enhanced factor is the periodic interrup­
tion of thermal and fluid boundary layers. Compared to conventional rectangular microchannel configuration,
the Nu is dramatically enhanced by about 2.5-fold at Re = 440. The thermal diodicity (Dit) and pressure drop
diodicity (Dip) are up to 1.4 and 2.1 at Re = 440, respectively. A comprehensive comparison is presented to show
the advantages of our design.

1. Introduction
Because of its high surface-to-volume ratio, single-phase micro­
channel heat sink is demonstrated as a promising cooling technique for
electronic device, battery cooling and air conditioning systems [1–6],
etc. But it is challenging to further improve the thermal performance of
conventional microchannel heat sinks because of the long-lasting issue
of laminar flow. Therefore, conventional single-phase microchannel
heat sinks cannot meet the demanding need of relatively high-power
electronic devices cooling [7–9]. At microscale, thermal boundary
layer almost occupies the entire channel, severely inhibiting the heat
exchange inside the channel. Therefore, significantly promoting fluid
mixing and enhancing heat exchange within the thermal boundary layer
is critical. To achieve this goal, various microchannel configurations
have been explored in the past decades, such as sinusoidal curved
microchannel [10], zig-zag square microchannel [11], baffles and offset
ribs [12]. But the fluid mixing and interruption of thermal boundary
layer are not intensified. Specially, it is difficult to achieve spatial fluid
mixing with these approaches.
Convection heat transfer in microchannel can be substantially
enhanced using different active and passive techniques [13–16]. Usu­
ally, active techniques are more effective but need more external
pumping power. For example, pulsed flow with different pulse fre­
quencies was applied to enhance mixing by intensified vortices [17].
Additionally, passive techniques mainly include introduction of nano­
particles into the fluid, microchannel surface modification and bound­
ary structures design. For example, heat transfer capacity can be
significantly improved by adding higher thermal conductivity nano­
particles [18,19]. Venkatasubbaiah et al. [20] showed that the Nusselt
number (Nu) was increased by 71% using carbon nanoparticle fluid.
Wen and Ding [21] demonstrated enhancement of convective heat
transfer by introducing γ-Al2O3 nanoparticles to the working fluid. The
results indicated that HTC was enhanced by 41%–47%. The potential
enhanced mechanism is that the particle migration resulting in the
disturbance of boundary layer. Alrowaili et al. [22] has prepared the
CuO and hybrid CuO–Cu/nanofluid, and thermal conductivity was
improved by 21%. Besides, the porous structures can effectively increase
heat exchange capacity without escalating pressure consumption [23].
Therefore, introducing new geometric configuration in microchannel
seems to be more effective to generate intensified fluid mixing.

* Corresponding author.
E-mail address: wenmingli@seu.edu.cn (W. Li).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijthermalsci.2023.108148
Received 17 September 2022; Received in revised form 31 December 2022; Accepted 5 January 2023
Available online 7 January 2023
1290-0729/© 2023 Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved.
Q. Han et al. International Journal of Thermal Sciences 186 (2023) 108148

Fig. 1. (a) Schematic of microchannel heat sink and (b) Three different microchannel configurations.

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Q. Han et al. International Journal of Thermal Sciences 186 (2023) 108148

Table 1 angle on the overall performance. The numerical results of current

The main dimensions of different microchannel configurations. microchannel study are compared to conventional rectangular micro­
Parameters Unit Values channel and other reported studies to demonstrate the advantages of our
design.
Heat sink length (L) μm 16,000
Heat sink width (W) μm 650
Heat sink height (H) μm 500 2. Problem description
Single saw-like structure unit length (Lt) μm 400
Single channel height (Ht) μm 300
Single-phase heat sink with multiple microchannel is widely used for
Single wall thickness (σ) μm 50
Rectangular channel width (Wr) μm 320
electronic cooling, as schematically illustrated in Fig. 1 (a). In this study,
Forward channel width (Wf) μm 560 one single microchannel of this heat sink will be numerically investi­
Backward channel width (Wb) μm 80 gated by considering the symmetry. Three different microchannel con­
Angle (θ) deg 30 figurations are designed, including conventional rectangular
microchannel (CR) and two types of saw-like microchannel (Type-I and
Type-II). The dimensions of the heat sink are: length L = 16 mm, width
W = 0.65 mm and height H = 0.5 mm. The width of rectangular
microchannel is Wr = 0.32 mm and height is Ht = 0.3 mm. For the saw-
like microchannel, the average width is also 0.32 mm. The equivalent
wall thickness is σt = 0.165 mm. Note that the heating surface and
overall heat transfer areas of these three microchannels are the same. In
consideration of water with high sensible heat and silicon with high
thermal conductivity, electrical insulation and oxidation stability, they
are respectively selected as the fluid and solid. Table 1 illustrates the
detailed dimensions of different microchannel configurations. The
bifurcation angle of the saw-like structure is defined as the angle be­
tween hypotenuse and backward direction. This angle is 30◦ in the type-I
saw-like microchannel.

3. Numerical method

3.1. Governing equations

To simulate thermal and hydraulic performance in a three-

Fig. 2. The boundary conditions of the saw-like microchannel. (a) Cross- dimensional model, several assumptions have been considered to solve
section of the microchannel. (b) Computational domain top-view. the mathematical model.

Extended studies have been reported to improve fluid mixing by 1) The Newtonian fluid is incompressible, steady and laminar;
exploring different microchannel geometries [24–28] such as the fins, 2) The microchannel has constant physical properties;
small cylinder, baffles and winglets. Li et al. [29] evaluated the effects of 3) The heat loss to the ambient can be neglected;
cavities in microchannel on the fluid flow and convection. Chai et al. 4) No phase change of fluid is considered.
[30] conducted a comprehensive investigation on overall performance
of the microchannel with periodic tapered section. Their results indi­ By considering above assumptions, the main governing equations
cated that Nu was increased by 12.5–72.3% compared to the convec­ used in this study include:
tional rectangular microchannel. Moreover, periodic
∇⋅→
u =0 (1)
converging-diverging cross section configuration has a significant ef­
fect on the single phase convective heat transfer. Brodnianska et al. [31] ρ→
u ⋅ ∇→
u = − ∇P + μ∇2 →
u (2)
experimentally and numerically showed that the convective heat
transfer performance can be enhanced by up to 229% in the in-line and (
ρcp →
)
u ⋅ ∇Tf = kf ∇2 Tf + Φ (3)
offset wavy microchannels. Ghaedamini et al. [32] demonstrated that
heat exchange capacity is substantially enhanced by generating chaotic For the conduction, the energy equation is obtained by:
fluid mixing in periodic converging-diverging microchannels.
ks ∇2 Ts = 0 (4)
Different from previous studies to enhance convective heat transfer
through various geometries [29,33,34], the present work proposes a where ρ, u, and cp are fluid density, velocity and specific heat, respec­
novel saw-like microchannel inspired by a microfluidic rectifier [35]. tively. Ts, Tf, ks and kf are solid temperature, fluid temperature and
The single phase diodicity of this microfluidic rectifier has been evalu­ thermal conductivity of silicon and DI-water, respectively. Փ is the
ated up to 2 [35]. However, the effect of this saw-like structure on viscous dissipation function, indicating the conversion rate of mechan­
convective heat transfer performance still remains. To improve the heat ical energy to heat energy due to viscous friction. Considering the
transfer performance by interrupting the thermal boundary layers and microchannel structure size and the fluid of water with extremely low
promoting sufficient fluid mixing, two types of saw-like microchannel viscosity, the viscosity dissipation is negligible in this study according to
configurations are investigated. Numerical study is conducted to eval­ the previous studies [36–38]. Moreover, thermophysical parameters (ρ,
uate the effects of saw-like structure on the fluid mixing and enhance­ u, cp and kf) of the fluid are temperature dependent and can be calcu­
ment of convection in a single channel. We also study the diodic lated by Refs. [39,40]:
performance of this saw-like microchannel by comparing the pressure ( )
drop and thermal performance in forward and backward directions, ρ Tf = 838.466135 + 1.40050603Tf − 0.0030112376Tf2
respectively. Furthermore, a parametric study is conducted to optimize +3.71822313 × 10− 7 Tf3
this heat sink by investigating the role of channel width and bifurcation

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Q. Han et al. International Journal of Thermal Sciences 186 (2023) 108148

( )
Table 2 μ Tf = 1.3799566804 − 0.021224019151Tf + 1.3604562827 × 10− 4 Tf2
The grid independence test.
− 4.6454090319 × 10− 7 Tf3 + 8.9042735735 × 10− 10 Tf4
Case Grid node Re Average solid Outlet fluid Pressure − 9.0790692686 × 10− 13 Tf5 + 3.8457331488 × 10− 16 Tf6
# number temperature/K temperature/K drop
/Pa ( )
cp Tf = 12010.1471 − 80.4072879Tf + 0.309866854Tf2
1 4,510,643 30 317.65 332.68 3573.3
375 293.29 296.38 42949.5 − 5.38186884 × 10− 4 Tf3 + 3.62536437 × 10− 7 Tf4
2 6,126,720 30 319.42 332.75 3452.8
( )
375 295.24 296.41 38866.4 kf Tf = − 0.869083936 + 0.00894880345Tf
3 9,074,234 30 319.56 332.78 3452.3 (5)
375 295.88 296.43 38821.8
− 1.58366345 × 10− 5 Tf2 + 7.97543259 × 10− 9 Tf3

3.2. Boundary conditions

The boundary conditions of saw-like microchannel (Type-I) are

considered, which are also applied to the simulation of saw-like
microchannel (Type-II) and CR channel. As shown in Fig. 2 (a), uni­
form heat load 15 W/cm2 is applied to backside surface and all side walls
are adiabatic. Conjugate heat transfer is assumed to be the heat transfer
mode of the heat sink. The side walls are assigned to be non-slip velocity
boundary (unon-slip = 0). At solid-liquid interface, Ts = Tf, and ks ∂∂Tns |Γ =
∂T
kf ∂nf |Γ . Г is the interface between the solid wall and liquid. The inlet
temperature of fluid is 293.15 K and the inlet velocity is given according
to the Reynold number. In this study, the Reynold numbers are varying
from 50 to 700. The outlet pressure is set to be 0 Pa, an ambient at­
mosphere (see Fig. 2 (b) ).

3.3. Model validation

Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) commercial software based on

Fig. 3. Comparisons between the present model and previous numerical and
experimental studies.
Fig. 4. The temperature difference between inlet and out are compared to the
theoretical data.
the finite element method (FEM) is used in this study to solve the gov­
erning equations. For the temperature and fluid flow fields, the second
order discretization is used. Relative error tolerance about 1e-5 is given
to evaluate the convergence of numerical results. By considering the
complexity of the designed geometries, tetrahedral type unstructured
meshes are constructed. Refined mesh has been applied to the boundary
layers and narrow domains. Grid independence study is conducted
firstly before numerical studies. Table 2 shows the study of the grid size
dependency with number of 4.5, 6.1 and 9.0 million, respectively. The
case with 9.0 million grid nodes is selected as the baseline. The result of
the outlet fluid temperature, average solid temperature and pressure
drop of the saw-like microchannel are compared with that of the refined
cases at Re = 30 and Re = 375. As shown in Table 2, the outlet fluid
temperature in three cases meets the principle of conservation of energy.
The average solid temperature and pressure drop in the case with 4.5
million grid number have a relative change of 8% at Re = 375. When the
grid number increases to 6.1 million, the relative errors decrease to only
0.23%. By considering the accuracy and computational cost, grid
number of 6.1 million is selected in the following simulation.
Additionally, the thermal resistance of a base microchannel is
compared to the reported numerical and experimental studies for the
same microchannel configuration. Experimental and numerical results
using finite difference method are presented by Kawano et al. [41] and
Qu et al. [42]. Deionized (DI) water and silicon are selected. The
structural parameters of microchannel is 10 mm × 57 μm with height of
180 μm. Uniform heat flux of 90 W/cm2 is given at top electronic
component. The other walls keep adiabatic conditions. Outlet thermal
resistance R t,out is presented for the Reynolds numbers ranging from 80
to 400, and the Rt,out is defined as:
Tw,out − Tin
Rt,out = (6)
q′′w

where the Tw,out and Tin represent the temperature of top wall and inlet
fluid, q′′w is the heat flux. The numerical results nicely match with the
reported results. There is a negligible deviation at low Reynolds
numbers. The explanation for this exception is due to that heat loss in the

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Q. Han et al. International Journal of Thermal Sciences 186 (2023) 108148

Fig. 5. The flow field distribution between three microchannel configurations at Re = 125.

experiment. As shown in Fig. 3, a maximum relative error is about 9.5% where the W1 and W2 represent the minimum and maximum width of
between the present numerical model and reported studies, indicating the saw-like channel, respectively.
the accuracy and reliability of the simulations in this study. Besides, the pressure drop cross the channel is obtained by:
Moreover, based on the energy conservation, the theoretical result is
obtained by: ΔP = Pin − Pout (11)

qw Ah For the proposed microchannel configurations, the pressure drop

Tout − Tin = (7)
ρAin um cp diodicity Dip is ratio of the pressure drop in opposite directions:
ΔPb
where the Ah, Ain and cp are the heating area, inlet area and specific heat, Dip = (12)
ΔPf
respectively. The heating area and inlet represent the bottom are and
cross section area of the microchannel. As shown in Fig. 4, the relative
where ΔPb and ΔPf represents the pressure drop along backward di­
error of temperature difference is less than 3.8%, which ensures the rection and forward direction. In addition, heat transfer performance is
accuracy of the current simulation.
characterized by averaged HTC and Nu, which can be expressed by:

3.4. Data reduction q′′w Ah

h= ( ) (13)
Ac Tw,ave − Tf ,ave
To comprehensively evaluate thermal/hydraulic performance of
different microchannel configurations, we need to get values of Reynold Nuaverage =
hDh
(14)
number, pressure drop, heat transfer coefficient, Nu, thermal diodicity kf
(Dit), pressure drop diodicity (Dip), etc. Firstly, Reynold number (Re) is
obtained by: where Ah and Ac are heating surface area (The bottom surface area of the
heat sink) and convective heat transfer area (The inner solid wall/fluid
ρum Dh contact surface area), respectively. Tw,ave, and Tf,ave are average channel
Re = (8)
μ surface temperature and fluid average temperature.
Similarly, thermal diodicity Dit is the ratio of Nu in the backward and
where μ, um and Dh are dynamic viscosity and hydraulic diameter. For
forward directions, which can be calculated by
rectangular channel, Dh can be given by:
NuB
2HW Dit = (15)
Dh = (9) NuF
(H + W)
In this study, the hydraulic diameter is calculated referring to the where the NuB and NuF are the Nusselt number in backward direction
average width of saw-like microchannel, which is calculated by Refs. and forward direction, respectively.
[43,44]: To evaluate the overall performance by considering heat transfer and
fluid flow characteristics, the quantitative measurement of the perfor­
W=
W1 + W2
(10) mance evaluation criteria (PEC) is used in this work. The PEC index can
2 be obtained by Refs. [12,45,46]:

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Q. Han et al. International Journal of Thermal Sciences 186 (2023) 108148

Fig. 6. The flow field distribution between three microchannel configurations at Re = 375.

Fig. 7. The temperature distributions of different microchannel configurations at Re = 375.

Nu/Nu0
PEC = (16) ΔPDh
(f /f 0 )1/3 f= (17)
2ρLum 2

where the subscript 0 represents the conventional rectangular micro­
channel. The f represents the average friction factor, which can be
expressed by:
where L is the length of the microchannel, um is the average inlet fluid
velocity.
To explore the heat transfer characteristics of different microchannel
configurations, the average temperature of bottom surface is calculated
by:

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Q. Han et al. International Journal of Thermal Sciences 186 (2023) 108148

Fig. 11. The variation Nu versus Re.

Fig. 8. Variation of average temperature for different microchannel
configurations.

Fig. 9. Pressure drop versus Re. Fig. 12. Thermal diodicity Dit versus Re.

∑
m ∑
n
Ti,j
(18)
i=1 j=1
Tb,ave =
mn

where the m and n present the grid number in the horizontal and vertical
directions of the heating surface.

4. Results and discussion

4.1. Characteristics of fluid flow

To evaluate the role of saw-like structure on the hydraulic perfor­

Fig. 10. Pressure diodicity Dip versus Re
mance, a comparison of flow field characterized by velocity contour and
velocity vector in the middle x-y plane (Z = 0.5 Ht) between two types of
saw-like microchannel and the CR microchannel is presented in Fig. 5
and Fig. 6 under two different Reynolds number of Re = 125 and Re =
375. For the saw-like microchannel, the flow fields along opposite di­
rections are plotted. Laminar flow is dominant in conventional rectan­
gular microchannel, each fluid layers move smoothly without vertical
mixing, seriously inhibiting the convective heat transfer performance. In
striking contrast, strong vortexes are generated in the saw-like micro­
channel, achieving significant spatial fluid mixing. Compared to forward
direction, fluid mixing induced by vortexes is more intensified in the
backward direction. The saw-like structure significantly interrupts flow

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Q. Han et al.
Fig. 13. Flow field distribution in type-I saw-like microchannel with different width.
characteristics and disturb fluid boundary layer. For type-II saw-like
microchannel, the vortexes are extended to larger area by shaping the
saw-like structure unit to the flow field.
As Reynold number increasing to Re = 375, the vortexes and fluid
mixing are stronger in the saw-like microchannel, especially along
backward direction. The domain of vortex regions significantly increases
at Re = 375. Due to the periodic perturbation effect of the saw-like unit,
the fluid boundary layers are continuously split, stretched and
disturbed. Additionally, the velocity gradient along backward direction
of saw-like microchannel is smaller than that along forward direction,
resulting in a more intensified mixing at different layers. (see Fig. 6)
4.2. Heat transfer characteristics
Enhancing spatial fluid mixing and disturbing boundary layers can
significantly affect the convective heat transfer performance. The tem­
perature distribution of CR and two types of saw-like microchannel is
given in Fig. 7. The result shows that fluid temperature gradually en­
larges along flow direction attributed to convective heat transfer.
Interestingly, the CR microchannel presents the similar thermal per­
formance compared to saw-like microchannel where the lowest fluid
temperature occurs at the microchannel center. However, saw-like
microchannel exhibits more uniform fluid temperature distribution
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International Journal of Thermal Sciences 186 (2023) 108148
compared to CR channel. This indicates that the saw-like microchannel
greatly enhanced heat transfer rate owing to periodic interruption and
fluid mixing. Moreover, better thermal performance is presented in the
backward flow direction. This is in accordance with fluid flow perfor­
mance in Figs. 5 and 6 due to the more intensified fluid mixing in the
backward direction.
Fig. 8 shows that the average temperature decreases as the increasing
of Re. However, the slope of curve decreases as Re increasing, which
indicates that increasing the fluid inlet flow rate cannot reduce the
average temperature effectively. Additionally, the type-II saw-like
microchannel presents the lowest average temperature, followed by
type-I saw-like microchannel and the CR presents the worst thermal
performance. It demonstrates that presence of saw-like structure
remarkably influences thermal performance. The heating surface
average temperature of the type-II saw-like microchannel are reduced
by 15.3%–22.7% compared to the CR channel.
4.3. Diodic performance
The presence of saw-like structure is essential to the enhancement of
overall performance in both forward and backward directions. In this
study, diodic performance of this design is discussed. Firstly, the vari­
ation of pressure drop for two saw-like microchannel configurations is
Q. Han et al.
Fig. 14. The effect of channel width on the Nu.
presented in Fig. 9. The pressure drops dramatically increase as the Re
increasing for both backward and forward directions. Due to the mo­
mentum loss induced by the saw-like structure, the pressure drop is
significantly higher along backward direction. Moreover, the pressure
drop of the type-II saw-like microchannel is closed to the type-I saw-like
microchannel at low Re. This pressure drop difference increases at
higher Re. The pressure drops of type-II saw-like microchannel in both
forward direction and backward direction are higher than that of type-I
saw-like microchannel.
The pressure drop difference in opposite flow direction exhibits an
apparent fluid diodic performance, which is calculated according to Eq.
Fig. 15. Type-I saw-like structure unit with various bifurcation angle.
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International Journal of Thermal Sciences 186 (2023) 108148
(11). Fig. 10 plots the change of pressure drop diodicity Dip for both
type-I and type-II configurations. At lower Re, the value of Dip is closed
to 1. Dip reaches to around 2.1 at Re near 700. Similar trend of Dip is
reported in multistaged Tesla valve by porwal [34].
The other aspect of diodic performance is thermal diodicity, which
can be calculated according to Eq. (15). Firstly, average Nu for opposite
directions is calculated, as illustrated in Fig. 11. Nu is highly influenced
by Re that can improve convection. By comparison, the Nu of type-I saw-
like microchannel outperforms the type-II saw-like microchannel. For
example, at Re = 440, the Nu along forward and backward direction of
type-I saw-like microchannel is 20.44 and 25.89, respectively.
Conversely, the Nu is 18.31 and 21.80 in type-II saw-like microchannel.
The thermal diodicity (Dit) versus Re is plotted in Fig. 12. The Dit is
up to 1.4, indicating the thermal performance in the backward direction
is significantly enhanced owing to the more intensified spatial fluid
mixing induced by the saw-like structure. This result is consistent with
study of multi-stage Tesla valve for cooling batteries [47], in which the
more uniform temperature distribution appears in the backward
direction.
4.4. Parametric study
For the saw-like microchannel configuration, channel width and
bifurcation angle are two important facets. Therefore, a parametric
study is carried out to investigate effects of these two aspects on thermal
and hydraulic performance.
4.4.1. Effect of channel width
The hydraulic performance of mainstream fluid is greatly influenced
by channel width of microchannel. Fig. 13 shows the effects of channel
width (i.e. Wb = 80 μm, Wb = 120 μm and Wb = 160 μm) on the velocity
distribution. In Fig. 13, fluid flow velocity is higher in the smaller
channel, promoting the convection heat transfer. The increasing channel
width weakens the diverging-converging effect of the saw-like structure
disrupting the fluid mixing. Moreover, the increasing channel width
guides fluid flow along the throttle, which impedes the mainstream
separation and chaotic advection. Therefore, the larger channel width
results in lower heat transfer performance.
The different channel width also has an impact on the thermal per­
formance. The variation of Nu for different channel width is presented in
Fig. 14 and which shows that Nu gradually decreases as channel width
increasing. For example, average Nu of type-I saw-like microchannel
with Wb = 0.12 mm is 1.20–1.35 times higher than that with Wb = 0.2
mm. For Wb = 0.12 mm, the ratio of Nu in the backward direction and
forward direction equals to 1.14–1.30 when Re ranging from 60 to 450.
Overall, thermal performance is highest for channel width of 0.8 mm.
4.4.2. Effect of bifurcation angle
The bifurcation angle is directly related to the spatial structure
layout of this saw-like structure unit, which further influences the
thermal and hydraulic performance. Fig. 15 schematically shows the
saw-like structure unit with bifurcation angle ranging from 30◦ to 49◦ .
At bifurcation angle of 49◦ , the overall performance in both directions
are the same due to symmetrical structure. Fig. 16 illustrates the velocity
distribution for various bifurcation angles (i.e. θ = 33◦ , θ = 43◦ and θ =
49◦ ). The vortex area increases when the bifurcation angle decreases in
the backward direction. This is mainly attributed to the increased
Q. Han et al.
Fig. 16. Flow field in type-I saw-like microchannel with different bifurcation angle.
Fig. 17. Influence of bifurcation angle on Nu.
diverging-converging effect with low bifurcation angle in the backward
direction. Typical flow in a saw-like structure includes diffluence and
confluence flow [48]. When the bifurcation angle decreases, the difflu­
ence flow reaches the corner of saw-like structure and the vortex area
enlarges, resulting in the more intensified mixing and chaotic advection.
Additionally, the vortex position moves down in the forward direction
with low bifurcation angle and stagnation zone generates at corner of
saw-like structure.
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International Journal of Thermal Sciences 186 (2023) 108148
Fig. 18. Dit of various bifurcation angle versus Re
To quantitatively evaluate the roles of bifurcation angle, Fig. 17
shows variation of Nu with different bifurcation angle versus Re. It is
apparent that the Nu continuously increases as the Re increases for all
cases. In the backward direction, the lower bifurcation angle has the
higher Nu, where the Nu of saw-like microchannel with bifurcation
angle of 33◦ and 43◦ are 29.02 and 28.08 at Re = 375, respectively.
Additionally, the lower bifurcation angle presents the lower Nu in the
forward direction, where the Nu of type-I saw-like microchannel with
bifurcation angle of 43◦ is 1.2 times larger than that saw-like
Q. Han et al.
Fig. 19. Dip with various bifurcation angle versus Re.
Fig. 20. Variation of Nu/Nu0 versus Re
Fig. 21. Variation of PEC versus Re
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International Journal of Thermal Sciences 186 (2023) 108148
microchannel with bifurcation angle of 33◦ . This is due to that the
strengthening diverging-converging effect of the channel with low
bifurcation angle induces the interruption of boundary layers, resulting
in thermal performance improvement. By contrast, as shown in Fig. 17,
the lower bifurcation causes larger stagnation zone in the forward di­
rection which has an adverse effect on the thermal performance. It
demonstrated that bifurcation angle has a significant role on diodic
performance. Furthermore, the flow and thermal diodicities are sum­
marized in Fig. 18 and Fig. 19 for different designs.
4.5. Enhancement of convection heat transfer
A comprehensive comparison between the present study and the
reported studies are presented to explore enhanced mechanisms of
thermal/hydraulic performance in saw-like microchannel. The normal­
ization of Nu (Nu/Nu0) versus Re is exhibited in Fig. 20.
In this work, Nu0 is the Nu of convectional rectangular channel.
Compared to the reported studies, these two saw-like microchannel
configurations exhibit higher Nu. The highest Nu/Nu0 in microchannel
with triangular ribs by Chai [30] and triangular cavities by Li [29] are
1.83 and 1.53, respectively. In this work, the Nu/Nu0 of type-I and
type-II saw-like microchannel configurations is up to 2.67 and 2.25,
respectively. In the studies by Chai and Li, fluid mixing was demon­
strated by the perturbation effect of ribs and sudden-expansion of cav­
ities. However, without the continuous reinforcement structure unit
layout, fluid mixing at the center is insufficient. By contrast, the periodic
saw-like structure can disturb boundary layers and induce 3D intensified
fluid mixing, consequently, leading to the substantially enhanced
convective heat transfer. Due to diverging-converging effect of period­
ically saw-like structure, the alternate vortex generates in different
spaces. Therefore, the transverse and longitudinal vortices lead to more
3D intensified fluid mixing and interruption boundary layers. Fig. 21
shows the variation of PEC versus Reynold number in type-I and type II
microchannels. The values of PEC dramatically decrease as the increase
of Re, above 1 for Re smaller than 600. The type-I microchannel has
better overall performance in the forward direction.
5. Conclusions
This work investigates the improvement in convective heat transfer
achieved by the saw-like microchannel. The thermal/hydraulic perfor­
mance of three configurations (convectional rectangular channel and
two saw-like microchannels) are numerically investigated. Particularly,
the thermal and pressure drop diodicities are comprehensively studied.
Moreover, a parametric study is conducted to study the effect of the
channel width and bifurcation angle on overall performance.
Convective heat transfer performance in saw-like microchannel is
significantly enhanced owing to sufficient spatial fluid mixing and pe­
riodic interruption of thermal and fluid boundary layers. Compared to
CR channel, the Nu of type-I and type-II saw-like microchannels is
increased by 2.64 and 2.11 times. The proposed saw-like microchannel
presents lower and more uniform temperature distribution. The average
temperature is reduced by 22.7% compared to that of CR channel. The
pressure and thermal diodicities of the type-I saw-like microchannel
(Wb = 80 μm, θ = 33◦ ) range 1.03–1.99 and 1.06–1.48. Convection in
this saw-like microchannel is remarkably affected by the channel width
and bifurcation angles. With the decrease the channel width, the
intensified fluid mixing is achieved. Additionally, the thermal diodicity
of type-I saw-like microchannel with bifurcation angle of 33◦ is
maximum increased by 9.2% and 23.3% than that with bifurcation angle
of 30◦ and 43◦ . Considering the diodic performance and heat transfer
capacity, the type-I saw-like microchannel with bifurcation angle of 33◦
and width of 0.8 mm are recommended for practical engineering
applications.
Q. Han et al.
Declaration of competing interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial
interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence
the work reported in this paper.
Data availability
Data will be made available on request.
Acknowledgement
This work was supported by the startup funding of Southeast Uni­
versity under the grants 1103007153 to Dr. Wenming Li and Post­
graduate Research & Practice Innovation Program of Jiangsu Province
(No. KYCX21_0093) to Mr. Qun Han.
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Nomenclature
Ac: convection heat transfer area, m2
Ah: heating surface area, m2
Ain: inlet area, m2
cp: specific heat capacity, J/(kg⋅K)
Dh: hydraulic diameter, m
Di: diodicity
Dip: pressure diodicity
Dit: thermal diodicity
Q. Han et al. International Journal of Thermal Sciences 186 (2023) 108148

f: average friction factor u: fluid velocity in the x direction, m/s

h: heat transfer coefficient, W/(m2⋅K) um: average inlet fluid velocity
H: W: cross-section width of the heat sink, m
Ht: Wr: Rectangular microchannel width, m
ks: thermal conductivity of the solid, W/(m⋅K) Wb: backward microchannel width, m
kf: thermal conductivity of the fluid, W/(m⋅K) Wf: forward microchannel width, m
L: leight of the heat sink, m
Lt: single microchannel leight, m
m: grid number in the horizontal direction Greek symbols
n: grid number in the vertical direction θ: bifurcation angle
Nu: Nusselt number μ: dynamic viscosity, Pa⋅s
NuB: Nusselt number in the backward direction ρ: density, kg/m3
NuF: Nusselt number in the forward direction σ: wall thickness, m
Nu0: Nusselt number of the rectangular microchannel Փ: viscous dissipation function
ΔP: pressure drop, Pa
Pin: inlet pressure, Pa
Pout: outlet pressure, Pa Subscript
q‘’w: heat flux, W/m2 ave: average
Re: Reynold number B: backward
Rt,out: outlet thermal resistance f: fluid
T: temperature, K F: forward
Tb,ave: average temperature of the solid surface, K s: solid
Tw,out: temperature of the heat sink top wall, K in: inlet
ΔT: temperature difference, K out: outlet
ΔTsup: wall superheat, K 0: rectangular microchannel

13