A Porous microchannel heat sinks CFD simulation is a crucial tool for designing the next generation of cooling systems for computer chips and LEDs. Standard microchannels use empty tubes to carry water, but porous microchannels are filled with a metal sponge (usually copper). This porous metal increases the surface area significantly, which helps remove much more heat. However, it also makes it harder to pump the water. A Porous microchannel ANSYS Fluent analysis helps engineers find the perfect balance between cooling power and pumping cost. This report details a Porous microchannel CFD validation study based on the experimental work of Hung et al. (2013). The simulation uses ANSYS Fluent to model the complex flow of water through a sintered copper medium. By using the Porous fluent model, we can predict the pressure drop and temperature distribution without building expensive physical prototypes. This study tests different configurations to ensure the simulation matches real-world experiments. This accuracy allows designers to confidently use Porous microchannel heat sinks Fluent simulations to create smaller, more efficient cooling devices for high-power electronics. For more resources on simulating heat exchange systems, please explore our heat transfer tutorials: https://cfdland.com/product-category/engineering/heat-transfer-cfd-simulation/

• Reference [1]: Hung, Tu-Chieh, Yu-Xian Huang, and Wei-Mon Yan. “Thermal performance analysis of porous-microchannel heat sinks with different configuration designs.” International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer66 (2013): 235-243.

Figure 1: The computational domain of the Porous microchannel heat sinks, showing the rectangular configuration design used for the validation study against Hung et al. (2013).

Simulation Process: ANSYS Fluent Setup for Porous Media Simulation

The simulation process for this Porous microchannel heat sinks CFD project began by recreating the exact geometry from the reference paper by Hung et al. (2013). The engineers built a 3D model representing a single microchannel containing a sintered copper porous medium. To ensure accurate results, a high-quality structured mesh consisting of 201,684 cells was generated using ICEM CFD. This grid uses organized hexahedral cells which are essential for minimizing numerical errors when solving the flow equations inside the complex porous zone. The mesh was refined near the heated walls to capture the steep temperature gradients that occur in high-performance electronics cooling.

Inside ANSYS Fluent, the physics were set up to mimic the experimental conditions perfectly. The “Porous Zone” condition was activated for the copper regions. The critical parameters—permeability & porosity were entered directly from the paper to control how much resistance the water faces. The Energy Equation was enabled to solve for heat transfer, using a “Local Thermal Equilibrium” assumption where the copper foam and the water share the same temperature at any given point. The boundary conditions were set with a constant water velocity at the inlet and a uniform heat flux of applied to the bottom wall to simulate a hot computer chip. These parameters can affect the heat sink thermal performance regarding heat sink overall resistance, pumping power and Nusselt number.

Figure 2: The structured mesh generated for the Porous microchannel CFD simulation

Post-processing: Performance & Validation Results

The simulation results provide a comprehensive audit of the system’s hydraulic accuracy and thermal capability. We can first examine the pressure contours in Figure 3 to validate the reliability of the Porous fluent model settings. The colors change smoothly from red at the inlet to blue at the outlet, which indicates a linear pressure drop characteristic of flow through a uniform porous medium. The most significant achievement of this Porous microchannel CFD study is the numerical agreement shown in the validation table below. The simulation predicts a pressure drop of 73,000 Pa, while the experimental value from the reference paper is 73,430 Pa. The difference between these two values is only 430 Pa (0.59%). This extremely low error proves that the permeability and porosity inputs are correct and that the model is fully validated. This high accuracy allows designers to confidently select the correct pump size for manufacturing, knowing the system requires exactly 73 kPa of pressure to operate efficiently.

Moving to the thermal performance, the temperature contours in Figure 4 illustrate how effectively the Porous microchannel heat sinks Fluent model removes heat from the source. The vertical cross-section reveals that the water enters the channel at a cool 293 K (20°C) and exits at approximately 351 K (78°C). This substantial 58°C temperature rise confirms that the water is successfully absorbing a massive amount of energy from the heated base. Beyond the visual contours, the calculated data confirms the high efficiency of the design. The analysis reveals a Nusselt number of 143. This high dimensionless number indicates that the convection heat transfer is very strong compared to simple conduction. Furthermore, the system demonstrates an Overall thermal resistance of 4.39E+01. A lower thermal resistance value is better, and this specific result proves that the porous copper matrix is extremely effective at conducting heat away from the sensitive electronic chip and into the fluid.

Finally, we must consider the energy cost of this cooling performance. The Porous microchannel ANSYS Fluent analysis calculated a Channel pumping power of 0.0114. This metric is crucial for manufacturers because it represents the energy required to push water through the dense metal sponge. A value of 0.0114 indicates that despite the high flow resistance, the power consumption remains within a manageable range for micro-electronic applications. The combination of a high Nusselt number and a reasonable pumping power proves that the porous medium acts as an effective heat spreader without requiring an excessively large pump. This ensures there are no dangerous hot spots that could damage components, while keeping the overall energy usage of the cooling system efficient.

Figure 3: Pressure contours from ANSYS Fluent showing pressure drop validation for Porous microchannel heat sinks CFD simulation

Figure 4: Temperature contours along the full length of the microchannel, visualizing how the water temperature rises as it absorbs heat from the bottom wall during the Porous microchannel ANSYS Fluent simulation.