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Outline

Title
Abstract
Introduction
Literature Review
Comparative Analysis of Deep Learning Models
Recent Advances in Hybrid Methods
Research Methodology
Data Acquisition & Preprocessing
Data Collection
Data Augmentation
Data Normalization
Multi-Objective Optimization
Experimental Validation
Case Study Application
Results and Discussion
Comparison with Traditional Methods
Sensitivity Analysis
Pareto Front Analysis
Optimal Designs
Inverse Design Results
Case Study Results
Limitations
Broader Implications
Conclusion
Summary of Findings
Summary of Key Contributions
Methodological Contribution
Future Work
References
All Topics
Engineering
Fluid Flow and Transfer Processes

Deep Learning for Heat Transfer Enhancement in Microchannels

Profile image of Temidayo O OgunrindeTemidayo O Ogunrinde

Abstract

Microchannels are crucial for thermal management in microelectronic cooling, medical equipment, and space technology. Microchannel designing with optimal heat transfer and minimum pressure drop is still a challenging task even today. Conventional approaches like computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and experimentations consume enormous time and computational power. Here, in this paper, an optimization framework based on deep learning (DL) for the microchannel heat transfer performance is presented. We introduce a CNN-PINN-based hybrid model for the prediction of heat transfer coefficients and pressure drop in different microchannel geometries and flow rates. Our proposed model is compared to high-fidelity CFD simulations and experiments and found to be more accurate and efficient. As a demonstration example, electronics cooling is utilized and demonstrates that DL-optimized wavy-channel possesses a 22% decrease in thermal resistance compared to conventional straight channels. The platform is designed to provide an evidence-based pathway toward the creation of next-generation microchannel systems for future applications in renewable energy, electric cars, and advanced manufacturing.

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DESIGN OF STACKED MICROCHANNEL HEAT SINKS USING COMPUTATIONAL FLUID DYNAMIC
IJAET Journal

The heat extraction problem is becoming an important factor in the development of microelectronics. Over the last decade, micromachining technology has been increasingly used for the development of highly efficient cooling devices called heat sink because of its undeniable advantages such as less coolant demands and small dimensions. One of the most important micromachining technologies is micro channels. Hence, the study of fluid flow and heat transfer in micro channels which are two essential parts of such devices, have attracted more attentions with broad applications in both engineering and medical problems. Heat sinks are classified into single-phase or two-phase according to whether boiling of liquid occurs inside the micro channels The microchannel heat sink is designed for electronic chips that could be effectively cooled by means of forced convection, by water flowing through the microchannels. This project presents a Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) flow simulation modeling, where water is made to flow across different cross-sectional microchannel heat sinks placed on heat source. The flow simulation of water and convective heat transfer are carried by using commercial software " Solid Works Flow Simulation ". In the CFD process stacked microchannels of various cross-sections viz., rectangular, triangular, pentagonal and circular are designed, then by defining the computational domain, boundary conditions as inlet mass flow (1e-5 kg/s),outlet pressure (static pressure) and heat flux(750w/cm2) and by considering the parallel and counter flow direction of water in different cross-sectional microchannels the temperature drop in heat sink, pressure drop across the channels and amount of volumetric heat transfer coefficient are analyzed and compared.

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Deep convolutional surrogates and degrees of freedom in thermal design
Feridun Hamdullahpur

arXiv (Cornell University), 2022

We present surrogate models for heat transfer and pressure drop prediction of complex fin geometries generated using composite Bézier curves. Thermal design process includes iterative high fidelity simulation which is complex, computationally expensive, and time-consuming. With the advancement in machine learning algorithms as well as Graphics Processing Units (GPUs), we can utilize the parallel processing architecture of GPUs rather than solely relying on CPUs to accelerate the thermo-fluid simulation. In this study, Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) are used to predict results of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) directly from topologies saved as images. The case with a single fin as well as multiple morphable fins are studied. A comparison of Xception network and regular CNN is presented for the case with a single fin design. Results show that high accuracy in prediction is observed for single fin design particularly using Xception network. Increasing design freedom to multiple fins increases the error in prediction. This error, however, remains within three percent for pressure drop and heat transfer estimation which is valuable for design purpose.

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Heat Transfer in Microchannels—2012 Status and Research Needs
J. Brandner

Journal of Heat Transfer, 2013

Heat transfer and fluid flow in microchannels have been topics of intense research in the past decade. A critical review of the current state of research is presented with a focus on the future research needs. After providing a brief introduction, the paper addresses six topics related to transport phenomena in microchannels: single-phase gas flow, enhancement in single-phase liquid flow and flow boiling, flow boiling instability, condensation, electronics cooling, and microscale heat exchangers. After reviewing the current status, future research directions are suggested. Concerning gas phase convective heat transfer in microchannels, the antagonist role played by the slip velocity and the temperature jump that appear at the wall are now clearly understood and quantified. It has also been demonstrated that the shear work due to the slipping fluid increases the effect of viscous heating on heat transfer. On the other hand, very few experiments support the theoretical models and a significant effort should be made in this direction, especially for measurement of temperature fields within the gas in microchannels, implementing promising recent techniques such as molecular tagging thermometry (MTT). The single-phase liquid flow in microchannels has been established to behave similar to the macroscale flows. The current need is in the area of further enhancing the performance. Progress on implementation of flow boiling in microchannels is facing challenges due to its lower heat transfer coefficients and critical heat flux (CHF) limits. An immediate need for breakthrough research related to these two areas is identified. Discussion about passive and active methods to suppress flow boiling instabilities is presented. Future research focus on instability research is suggested on developing active closed loop feedback control methods, extending current models to better predict and enable superior control of flow instabilities. Innovative high-speed visualization and measurement techniques have led to microchannel condensation now being studied as a unique process with its own governing influences. Further work is required to develop widely applicable flow regime maps that can address many fluid types and geometries. With this, condensation heat transfer models can progress from primarily annular flow based models with some adjustments using dimensionless parameters to those that can directly account for transport in intermittent and other flows, and the varying influences of tube shape, surface tension and fluid property differences over much larger ranges than currently possible. Electronics cooling continues to be the main driver for improving thermal transport processes in microchannels, while efforts are warranted to develop high performance heat exchangers with microscale passages. Specific areas related to enhancement, novel configurations, nanostructures and practical implementation are expected to be the research focus in the coming years.

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Modeling heat transfer and liquid flow in micro-channels
Magdy Abou Rayan

The use of micro-channels in order to cool modern high speed electronic circuits is one of the techniques frequently adopted in current practice. A burst of publications in this area has been observed in the last decade. However, modeling of fluid flow and heat transfer in micro-channels is still an open problem. In fact, many deviations have been experimentally observed between well established correlations used for conventional normally sized channels and the behavior of microchannels. These deviations increase as the channel size decreases. In this work, observed experimental deviations will first be listed, followed by a critical review of different hypotheses advanced in the literature to explain them. One of these hypotheses will be thoroughly developed in order to build a model that explains both the orders of magnitudes and the trends of observed phenomena.

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Numerical Analysis of Microchannels Designed for Heat Sinks
Jufan Zhang

Nanomanufacturing and Metrology

Conjugate heat transfer is numerically investigated using a three-dimensional computational fluid dynamics approach in various microchannel geometries to identify a high-performance cooling method for piezoelectric ceramic stacks and spindle units in high-precision machines. Straight microchannels with rectangular cross sections are first considered, showing the performance limitations of decreasing the size of the microchannels, so other solutions are needed for high applied heat fluxes. Next, many microchannel designs, focusing on streamwise geometric variation, are compared to straight channels to assess their performances. Sinusoidally varying channels produce the highest heat transfer rates of those studied. Thus, their optimization is considered at a channel width and height of 35 and 100 μm, respectively. Heat transfer increases as the amplitude and spatial frequencies of the channels increase due to increased interfacial surface area and enhanced Dean flow. The highest perfo...

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Micro Channel Heat Transfer, Pressure Drop and Macro Prediction Methods | NIST
Mark Kedzierski

2003

Advances in the basic understanding of fluid physics have opened an era of unprecedented application of heat transfer processes, and fluid dynamics systems using microchannels. One of the greatest obstacles to the application of leading edge fluid physics science is the lack of engineering tools. For example, is it appropriate to use macro predictive methods for sizing microchannels for desired single-phase heat transfer and pressure drop? Some published data on friction characteristics in microchannels shows a significant disparity between microchannel data and macro-channel predictions. In short, single-phase laminar and turbulent heat transfer and pressure drops in microchannels can differ greatly from macro scale predictions. This manuscript examines several phenomena in terms of potentially causing a difference between “micro” measurements and “macro” prediction methods. Expressions for the tube diameter for which these factors become influential are calculated. Three data sets...

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Optimization of Heat Transfer Rate in the Rectangular Microchannel of Different Aspect Ratios With Constant Cross Sectional Area
Faramarz Kowsari

ASME 2008 First International Conference on Micro/Nanoscale Heat Transfer, Parts A and B, 2008

The increased power dissipation and reduced dimensions of microelectronics devices have emphasized the need for highly efficient compact cooling technologies. Microchannel heat sinks are of particular interest due to the very high rates of heat transfer they enable in conjunction with greatly reduced heat sink length scales and coolant mass flow rate. Therefore, in the present work, optimization of laminar convective heat transfer in the microchannel heat sinks is investigated for uniform heat flux and different cross sectional areas of different aspect ratios. Three-dimensional numerical simulations of general form of energy equation were performed to predict Nusselt number in the laminar flow regime. Using these results, an optimum forced convective heat transfer coefficient was computed for several cross sectional areas and Reynolds numbers, utilizing the univariable search method. Different aspect ratios have different influences on Nusselt number in thermally developing and fully developed regions for different cross sectional areas and Reynolds numbers. There exists an optimum Nusselt number for each Reynolds number and cross sectional area by varying aspect ratio. Thus, optimized state is computed and related graphs are presented.

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Numerical Analysis of Heat Transfer Enhancement in Wavy Trapezoidal and Rectangular Microchannels
IJIMEAM UMB

International Journal of Innovation in Mechanical Engineering and Advanced Materials, 2025

This study presents a comprehensive Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) analysis of heat transfer enhancement in microchannels with varying geometries, specifically focusing on wavy microchannels with trapezoidal and rectangular cross-sections. Water is used as the working fluid, and silicon is selected as the solid wall material. A three-dimensional conjugate heat transfer model is developed by solving the steady-state Navier-Stokes and energy equations using the finite volume method in ANSYS Fluent, with the SIMPLEC algorithm employed for pressure-velocity coupling. The analysis examines the influence of cross-sectional shape and wall waviness on thermal performance, while maintaining a constant hydraulic diameter across all configurations. Eight different geometries, including straight and wavy versions of rectangular and trapezoidal cross-sections with varying top-to-bottom width ratios (0.075-0.055 mm), are evaluated over a Reynolds number range corresponding to inlet velocities of 0.5-4.0 m/s. Results show that wavy microchannels significantly enhance heat transfer compared to their straight counterparts. For instance, at 4 m/s, the Nusselt number for the wavy rectangular microchannel reaches 9.48, compared to 7.19 for the straight rectangular configuration, representing a 32% enhancement. Similarly, the wavy trapezoidal channel with a top width of 0.18 mm achieves a maximum Nusselt number of 9.25, compared to 7.19 for its straight equivalent, indicating a 29% improvement. Additionally, the Nu/Nu₀ versus Re plots reveal a consistent trend of increased heat transfer due to wall waviness across all geometries, with negligible influence from cross-sectional shape when hydraulic diameter is kept constant. The study demonstrates that incorporating wavy structures into microchannel designs significantly improves thermal performance with minimal increases in pressure drop, and that the effect is driven more by wall geometry than by cross-sectional shape. These findings provide valuable insights for the development of compact and efficient microchannel heat sinks for electronic cooling applications.

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Analysis and Optimization of the Thermal Performance of Microchannel Heat Sinks
David Beltran

2003 International Electronic Packaging Technical Conference and Exhibition, Volume 2, 2003

A number of modeling approaches of increasing levels of complexity for the analysis of convective heat transfer in microchannels are presented and compared. A detailed computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model is used to obtain baseline results against which the different approximate approaches are compared. These include a 1-D resistance model, a fin approach, two fin-liquid coupled models, and a porous medium approach, all of which are amenable to closed-form solutions for the temperature field. The good agreement between the exact and approximate methods indicates that with carefully chosen assumptions, these analytical results can lead to adequate descriptions of the thermal performance, while allowing easier manipulation of microchannel geometries for the purpose of optimization. Practical optimization procedures are developed to minimize the overall thermal resistance of microchannel heat sinks, using each of the five approaches.

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UNIVERSITY OF NEW SOUTH WALES SYDNEY SCHOOL OF MECHANICAL AND MANUFACTURING FACULTY OF ENGINEERING HEAT TRANSFER ENHANCEMENT IN MICRO-CHANNEL USING NANOFLUIDS
James Huang
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References (24)

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The accurate prediction of the two-phase heat transfer coefficient (HTC) as a function of working fluids, channel geometries and process conditions is key to the optimal design and operation of compact heat exchangers. Advances in artificial intelligence research have recently boosted the application of machine learning (ML) algorithms to obtain data-driven surrogate models for the HTC. For most supervised learning algorithms, the task is that of a nonlinear regression problem. Despite the fact that these models have been proven capable of outperforming traditional empirical correlations, they have key limitations such as overfitting the data, the lack of uncertainty estimation, and interpretability of the results. To address these limitations, in this paper, we use a multi-output Gaussian process regression (GPR) to estimate the HTC in microchannels as a function of the mass flow rate, heat flux, system pressure and channel diameter and length. The model is trained using the Brunel Two-Phase Flow database of high-fidelity experimental data. The advantages of GPR are data efficiency, the small number of hyperparameters to be trained (typically of the same order of the number of input dimensions), and the automatic trade-off between data fit and model complexity guaranteed by the maximization of the marginal likelihood (Bayesian approach). Our paper proposes research directions to improve the performance of the GPR-based model in extrapolation.

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A review of liquid flow and heat transfer in microchannels with emphasis to electronic cooling
Aparesh Datta

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Since the realization of microchannel devices more than three and half decades ago with water as the cooling fluid providing heat transfer enhancement, significant progress has been made to improve the cooling performance. Thermal management for electronic devices with their ever-widening user profile remains the major driving force for performance improvement in terms of miniaturisation, long-term reliability, and ease of maintenance. The ever-increasing requirement of meeting higher heat flux density in more compact and powerful electronic systems calls for further innovative solutions. Some recent studies indicate the promise offered by processes with phase change and the use of active devices. But their adoption for electronic cooling still weighs unfavourably against long-term fluid stability and simplicity of device profile with moderate to high heat transfer capability. Applications and reviews of these promising research trends have been briefly visited in this work. The main focus of this review is the flow and heat transfer regime related to electronic cooling in evolving channel forms, whose fabrication are being enabled by the significant advancement in micro-technologies. Use of disruptive wall structures like ribs, cavities, dimples, protrusions, secondary channels and other interrupts along with smooth-walled channels with curved flow passages remain the two chief geometrical innovations envisaged for these applications. These innovations target higher thermal enhancement factor since this implies more heat transfer capability for the same pumping power in comparison with the corresponding straight-axis, smooth-wall channel configuration. The sophistication necessary to deal with the experimental uncertainties associated with the micron-level characteristic length scale of any microchannel device delayed the availability of results that exhibited acceptable matching with numerical investigations. It is indeed encouraging that the experimental results pertaining to simple smooth channels to grooved, ribbed and curved microchannels without unreasonable increase in pumping power have shown good agreement with conventional numerical analyses based on laminar-flow conjugate heat-transfer model with no-slip boundary condition. The flow mechanism with the different disruptive structures like dimple, cavity and rib, fin and interruption, vortex generator, convergingdiverging side walls or curved axis are reviewed to augment the heat transfer. While the disruptions cause heat transfer enhancement by interrupting the boundary layer growth and promoting mixing by the shed vortices or secondary channel flow, the flow curvature brings in enhancement by the formation of secondary rolls culminating into chaotic advection at higher Reynolds number. Besides these revelations, the numerical studies helped in identifying the parameter ranges, promoting a particular enhancement mechanism. Also, the use of modern tools like Poincare section and the analysis of flow bifurcation leading to chaotic advection is discussed. Among the different disruptive structures, sidewall cavity with rib on the bottom wall within the cavity plays a significant role in augmenting the thermal performance. Among the different converging-diverging side walls or curved axis, the sinusoidal channel provides the highest mixing by the introduction of secondary vortices or dean vortices to augment the heat transfer with less pressure drop. The optimum geometry in terms of high heat transfer with low pressure plays a major role in the design of heat sink. Directions of some future research are provided at the end.

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