Heat Transfer in Water-Cooled Silicon Carbide Milli-Channel Heat Sinks for High Power Electronic Applications

Abstract

Heat transfer and fluid flow in a novel class of silicon carbide water-cooled milli-channel heat sinks were investigated. The heat sinks were manufactured using an extrusion freeform fabrication (EFF) rapid prototyping technology and a water-soluble polymer material. Rectangular heat exchangers with 3.2 cm×2.2 cm planform area and varying thickness, porosity, number of channels, and channel diameter were fabricated and tested. The perchannel Reynolds number places the friction coefficients in the developing to developed hydrodynamic regime, and showed excellent agreement with laminar theory. The overall heat transfer coefficients compared favorably with the theory for a single channel row but not for multiple rows.