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THERMAL SCIENCE
International Scientific Journal
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CONJUGATE THERMO-HYDRAULIC OPTIMIZATION OF A ZIGZAG MICROCHANNEL HEAT SINK USING ADVANCED NANOFLUID COOLANTS
ABSTRACT
This numerical study investigates the thermo-hydraulic performance of a zigzag microchannel heat sink MCHS cooled by advanced nanofluids for high heat flux electronic applications. A 3D conjugate heat transfer model is developed and numerically solved using ANSYS Fluent to analyze the effects of Diamond-H₂O, TiO₂-H₂O, and Ag-H₂O nanofluids at 2% volume fraction across a turbulent Reynolds number range 2250 ≤ Re ≤ 7575. The zigzag geometry effectively disrupts thermal boundary layers and generates secondary flows notably improving heat transfer compared to straight channels. The results show that all nanofluids enhance thermal performance through by increasing the heat transfer coefficient the degree of enhancement. The Diamond-H₂O nanofluid yields the highest heat transfer coefficient while incurs the high pressure drop because of its elevated effective viscosity. In contrast the Ag-H₂O nanofluid has a favorable combination which provides significant thermal enhancement with a very small penalty in friction factor accurately capturing the hydraulic behavior of deionized water. The performance evaluation criterion PEC remained below unity across all investigated. This overall analysis highlights the importance of the trade-off between thermal and pumping costs, indicating Ag-H₂O nanofluid as a promising fluid for optimizing the overall thermo-hydraulic performance of progressive zigzag MCHS systems.
KEYWORDS
PAPER SUBMITTED: 2026-03-09
PAPER REVISED: 2026-05-02
PAPER ACCEPTED: 2026-06-24
PUBLISHED ONLINE: 2026-07-11
DOI REFERENCE: https://doi.org/10.2298/TSCI260309099A
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© 2026 Society of Thermal Engineers of Serbia. Published by the Vinča Institute of Nuclear Sciences, National Institute of the Republic of Serbia, Belgrade, Serbia. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence