Research Of Radiators Heat Transfer Characteristic For Semiconductor Refrigeration Hot Side

Semiconductor refrigeration has many unique advantages:responses quickly, precise temperature adjustment, environment friendly, etc. Therefore, semiconductor refrigeration gets attention and is applied in the fields of aerospace, military and so on recently. Since the Fourier effect exists in the semiconductor material, energy transfers from the hot side to the cold side. So it is necessary to dissipate heat from the hot side and it cools better if the temperature difference between the hot and cold sides is smaller. When we use the technique of semiconductor refrigeration, the heat dissipation methods should be chosen carefully.This paper models the heat dissipation methods of semiconductor cooler’s hot side with commercial CFD software Fluent. It optimizes physical parameters of plate-fin heat sink, heat pipe and compares the effect of different radiators for cooling semiconductor cooler. Moreover, verifying the conclusion of simulation through experiment and comparing systems of different heat dissipation methods synthetically. The main jobs of the paper are as follows:This paper conducts simulation of different heat dissipation methods of plate-fin heat sink, heat pipe radiator and flat pipe with Fluent and analyzes the advantages and disadvantages of them. After computation, we can get cloud images of temperature distribution through postprocessor. Comparison and analysis of different radiators can be done with cloud images. It optimizes physical parameters of plate-fin heat sink and heat pipe. The simulation result of plate-fin heat sink shows that the height and number of fins influence the heat dissipation effect, after synthetical comparison, it gets optimum parameters of height and number. It discusses the influence on flat pipe’s heat dissipation effects of these parameters including fluid velocity, fluid temperature and number of microchannels and optimizes them. Experiment verifies the result of simulation about the effect of three methods, moreover, comparing the COP of three refrigeration systems which are composed of different radiators. The conclusions through these work are as follows:Among these three radiators, flat pipe supplied with appropriate temperature fluid shows the best effect of heat dissipation which is better than heat pipe radiator. However, the equipment of flat pipe is complicated and the fluid in microchannels may cause some problems. Plate-fin heat sink shows the worst effect, but it costs less and equips easily. So it is better to use plate-fin heat sink when the rated power of heat dissipation is lower. The simulation of fin parameters of plate-fin heat sink gets a optimum number of fins. The heat dissipation power rises as the height of fin increases. However, we should consider actual space if we need to choose a radiator, moreover, as the height increases, the rate of heat dissipation power increasement is slow even can be ignored. The effect is better if the inlet fluid’s temperature is lower, But the fluid needs energy compensation in the cycle. So, the inlet temperature should be decided to satisfies requirement. The inlet fluid velocity of flat pipe can’t be too small, if so, it will result in fluid flowing in chaos. When the inlet velocity is between 0-0.1m/s, the change of velocity has a great influence on heat dissipation. When the velocity exceeds 0.1 m/s, the influence is small. Experiment verifies the conclusions from simulation. In the environment of constant temperature 20℃, running the three refrigeration systems, it shows that flat pipe has the highest COP and plate-fin heat sink has the worst performance. This paper analyzes advantages and disadvantages of the three radiators in detail, optimizes parameters of models which can provide important reference for choosing which radiator to use when using semiconductor refrigeration.