A New Technique for Improving Heat Transfer in Forced-Convection Cooling Systems: Optimal Design of a Conjugate System

In this paper, a new technique is proposed for improving heat transfer in forced-convection systems by designing an optimal conjugated heat transfer system. The conjugated heat transfer system is created by placing a highly conductive plate as a heat transfer interface between heat sources and the flowing fluid. Unlike the most common techniques used in practice, this technique does not interrupt the convective flow nor does it manipulate the design of the heat sources. Numerical work is carried out based on the SIMPLEC algorithm to compute the temperature field in the plate. Constructal theory is utilized to determine the optimal thickness of the highly conductive plate. The optimization objective is to maximize the heat transfer and improve the cooling performance by minimizing the hot spot temperature. The results show that if only a conductive interface plate is placed between the heat sources and the fluid flow without any changes in the flow characteristics or heat sources design, the cooling performance can be remarkably enhanced depending on the Reynolds number of the flow and the plate thermal conductivity.