Simulation of Subcooled Flow Boiling in Manifold Microchannel Heat Sink

Abstract The manifold microchannel (MMC) heat sink has become the most popular one among emerging technologies for high heat flux thermal management because of its high surface-to-volume ratio. Even though numerous numerical studies have been performed for the single-phase flow in the MMC heat sink, researches on two-phase flow boiling/condensation in this type of microchannel is seldomly reported because of its issues with flow pattern prediction. In the present work, a numerical approach involving two-phase interface capturing, phase change and solid heat conduction is conducted for the simplified MMC unit cell model. Heat and mass transfers of Lee model and interfacial heat resistance model for phase change are validated by the single bubble growth problem. Besides, both phase-change models are shown to provide good predictions against the experimental temperature database, with all of the data points falling within −5% to +20% and −5% to +10% error bands for Lee model and interfacial resistance model, respectively. Furthermore, a liquid-vapor interface region with thin thickness and accurate interface temperature can be obtained by the interfacial resistance model coupled with homogeneous nucleation-site model.