Convective Heat Transfer Enhancement through Laser-Etched Heat Sinks: Elliptic Scale-Roughened and Cones Patterns

The efficient dissipation of localized heat flux by convection is a key request in several engineering applications, especially electronic ones. The recent advancements in manufacturing processes are unlocking the design and industrialization of heat exchangers with unprecedented geometric characteristics and, thus, performance. In this work, laser etching manufacturing technique is employed to develop metal surfaces with designed microstructured surface patterns. Such precise control of the solid-air interface (artificial roughness) allows to manufacture metal heat sinks with enhanced thermal transmittance with respect to traditional flat surfaces. Here, the thermal performance of these laser-etched devices is experimentally assessed by means of a wind tunnel in a fully turbulent regime. At the highest Reynolds number tested in the experiments (ReL≈16,500), elliptic scale-roughened surfaces show thermal transmittances improved by up to 81% with respect to heat sinks with flat surface. At similar testing conditions, cones patterns provide an enhancement in Nusselt number and thermal transmittance of up to 102% and 357%, respectively. The latter results are correlated with the main geometric and thermal fluid dynamics descriptors of the convective heat transfer process in order to achieve a predictive model of their performance. The experimental evidence shown in this work may encourage and guide a broader use of micro-patterned surfaces for enhancing convective heat transfer in heat exchangers.