Thermal Optimization of Channel Flows with Discrete Heating Sections

Abstract

The conventional means of thermal optimization (TO) suffers from complications in simultaneously optimizing a number of parameters which govern the process. This is particularly severe when thermal-fluid flow phenomena are involved, for example, optimization of electronic cooling devices. In order to revolutionize the means of optimizing a system involving both thermal and fluid flow phenomena, a new entropy generation minimization (EGM) method is developed utilizing the second law of thermodynamics which implies that the minimization of entropy generation is equivalent to thermal optimization. In this study, both TO and EGM are performed on the design of packages of parallel boards with discrete block heat sources. The board spacing for minimum entropy generation agrees very well with that calculated by maximizing the thermal conductance induced by both heat transfer and viscous friction.