Due to the high performance of electronic components, the heat generation is increasing dramatically. Heat dissipation becomes a significant issue in efficiency promotion and stable operation. Microchannels are of current interest for use in heat exchangers where very high heat transfer performance is desired. Microchannels provide high heat transfer coefficients because of their small hydraulic diameters. In this study, the design and experimental investigation of fluid flow and heat transfer in a microchannel heat exchanger is conducted. Water and air are used as the working fluids and flowed through microchannels. The heat exchanger has been designed with 6 rows of microchannels for water flow and 7 rows of microchannels for forced flow of air. The heights of the microchannels are 4 mm and 10 mm respectively for water and air flows. Microchannels are brazed to form the heat exchanger. For forced convection cooling with air, a military fan is used. A constant heat source has been specifically designed for experiments. Water flow and heat transfer experiments are conducted on the aluminum microchannel heat exchanger. An experimental method of imposing a constant heat flux to water prior to the entrance to the microchannel heat exchanger, to adjust the inlet temperatures is used. v From the data obtained, the rate of heat transfer, effectiveness and various other parameters have been computed and the results have been compared with those from an available commercial heat exchanger. The results indicate that the heat exchanger performs well and provides 681 W of cooling in a volume 677.6 cm3 while the commercial heat exchanger provides 702.5 W of cooling in a volume 2507.5 cm3. In addition, air-side Colburn modulus has been obtained with respect to Reynolds number.

Mini-/microchannel components have received attention over the past few decades owing to their compactness and superior thermal performance. Microchannel heat sinks are typically manufactured through traditional manufacturing practices (milling and sawing, electrodischarge machining, and water jet cutting) by changing their components to work in microscale environments or microfabrication techniques (etching and lost wax molding), which have emerged from the semiconductor industry. An extrusion process is used to produce multiport minichannel-based heat exchangers (HXs). However, geometric manufacturing limitations can be considered as drawbacks for all of these techniques. For example, a complex out-of-plane geometry is extremely difficult to fabricate, if not impossible. Such imposed design constraints can be eliminated using additive manufacturing (AM), generally known as three-dimensional (3D) printing. AM is a new and growing technique that has received attention in recent years. The inherent design freedom that it provides to the designer can result in sophisticated geometries that are impossible to produce by traditional technologies and all for the redesign and optimization of existing models. The work presented in this thesis aims to investigate the thermal performance of enhanced minichannel HXs manufactured via metal 3D printing both numerically and experimentally. Rectangular winglet vortex generators (VGs) have been chosen as the thermal enhancement method embedded inside the flat tube. COMSOL Multiphysics, a commercial software package using a finite element method (FEM), has been used as a numerical tool. The influence of the geometric VG parameters on the heat transfer and flow friction characteristics was studied by solving a 3D conjugate heat transfer and laminar flow. The ranges of studied parameters utilized in simulation section were obtained from our previous interaction with various AM technologies including direct metal laser sintering (DMLS) and electron-beam melting (EBM). For the simulation setup, distilled water was chosen as the working fluid with temperaturedependent thermal properties. The minichannel HX was assumed to be made of AlSi10Mg with a hydraulic diameter of 2.86 mm. The minichannel was heated by a constant heat flux of 5 Wcm−2 , and the Reynolds number was varied from 230 to 950. A sensitivity analysis showed that the angle of attack, VG height, VG length, and longitudinal pitch have notable effects on the heat transfer and flow friction characteristics. In contrast, the VG thickness and the distance from the sidewalls do not have a significant influence on the HX performance over the studied range. On the basis of the simulation results, four different prototypes including a smooth channel as a reference were manufactured with AlSi10Mg via DMLS technology owing to the better surface roughness and greater design uniformity. A test rig was developed to test the prototypes. Owing to the experimental facility and working fluid (distilled water), the experiment was categorized as either a simultaneously developing flow or a hydrodynamically developed but thermally developing flow. The Reynolds number ranged from 175 to 1370, and the HX was tested with two different heat fluxes of 1.5 kWm−2 and 3 kWm−2 . The experimental results for the smooth channel were compared to widely accepted correlations in the literature. It was found that 79% of the experimental data were within a range of ±10% of the values from existing correlations developed for the thermal entry length. However, a formula developed for the simultaneously developing flow overpredicted the Nusselt number. Furthermore, the results for the enhanced channels showed that embedding VGs can considerably boost the thermal performance up to three times within the parameters of the printed parts. Finally, the thermal performance of the 3D-printed channel showed that AM is a promising solution for the development of minichannel HXs. The generation of 3D vortices caused by the presence of VGs ii can notably boost the thermal performance, thereby reducing the HX size for a given heat duty.

Dans le cadre du développement des voitures électriques (VE), la solution de chauffage de l’habitacle par pompe à chaleur (PAC) s’impose graduellement en raison des plus grandes efficacités de ces dernières par rapport aux résistances électriques classiques. Cependant, dans certaines conditions, du givre se forme sur l’évapo-condenseur entraînant une dégradation marquée des performances du système. L’enjeu général de ce travail est donc de développer une PAC pour VE efficace en conditions de givrage afin d’améliorer l'autonomie en hiver. Pour ce faire, un évapo-condenseur résistant au givrage est nécessaire. Afin d’améliorer le design de l’échangeur, un modèle dynamique et pseudo 3D d’échangeur à microcanaux, typique de l’automobile, en conditions de givrage a été développé. Un sous-modèle de croissance de givre à la fois simple et précis a été établi en étudiant les différentes hypothèses de modélisation trouvées dans la littérature. Ensuite, au niveau échangeur de chaleur, la clé réside dans la bonne prédiction des pertes de charge aérauliques. Ainsi, une nouvelle approche a été de considérer les épaisseurs maximales locales de givre et une corrélation intégrant l’impact du givre afin de bien prédire les pertes de charge, la chute du débit d’air, et donc la chute de la puissance thermique de l’échangeur. Le modèle complet d’échangeur de chaleur couplé à un ventilateur a été validé expérimentalement. À partir d’une étude numérique basée sur le modèle, deux concepts innovants ont été établis : l’un avec ailettes ondulées débordantes et l’autre avec passes de réfrigérant croisées. Deux prototypes ont été fabriqués, à partir de l’évapo-condenseur de la Renault Zoé, puis testés. Le meilleur des deux échangeurs, celui à ailettes débordantes, a été monté sur véhicule et comparé à l’échangeur de la Zoé. Le prototype a permis d’allonger d’environ 2.5 fois la période de fonctionnement du système. Finalement, un modèle de PAC avec givrage a été réalisé et intégré dans un modèle complet de VE. Pour un VE avec une autonomie d’environ 140 km sans chauffage, il s’avère que le givrage de la PAC dégrade l’autonomie d’environ 15% pour un trajet à 0°C et 90% d'humidité. Grâce à l’utilisation du prototype à ailettes ondulées débordantes, cette perte d’autonomie est de 3% seulement. / In the electric vehicle (EV) development context, the choice of heat pumps (HP) for cabin heating is becoming more popular due to their high efficiency compared to electric heaters. However, under some operating conditions, frost forms on the HP evapo-condenser causing a dramatic drop in the system performances until the system cannot operate. Hence, this work aims at developing a HP for EV which remains efficient under frosting conditions ultimately, to improve the EV range in the winter. This requires the design of a frost-resistant heat exchanger (HX). First, to improve the HX design, a dynamic and pseudo-3D model under frosting conditions of a typical HX for cars has been developed. A simple and accurate frost growth sub-model has been established by studying the various modeling assumptions found in the literature. Then, at the HX level, the key point has been to predict the air pressure losses, via the consideration of the maximum local frost thicknesses and the development of a correlation considering frost, in order to predict the drop of airflow and therefore the drop of the HX cooling capacity. Then, the model of the HX coupled with the fan has been validated experimentally. Using the model, a numerical study has been conducted and two innovative concepts have been established: one with wavy upstream extending fins and the other with crossed passes of refrigerant. Two prototypes were fabricated, using a reference HX taken from the Renault Zoé, and then tested. The best of the two HX, the one with upstream extending fins, was mounted on a VE and compared to the reference case. The prototype allowed extending the system operation by 2.5 times approximately. Finally, a HP model under frosting conditions was built and integrated into a EV model. It appeared that, for an EV with a range of approximately 140 km without heating, the HP frosting degrades the autonomy by about 15% at 0°C and 90% humidity, which was reduced to 3% via the use of the innovative HX prototype with wavy upstream extending fins.

Rising energy demands and the continual push to find more energy efficient technologies have been the impetus for the investigation of waste heat recovery techniques. Diesel engine exhaust heat utilization has the potential to significantly reduce the consumption of fossil fuels and reduce the release of greenhouse gases, because diesel engines are ubiquitous in industry and transportation. The exhaust energy can used to provide refrigeration by implementing an organic Rankine cycle coupled with a vapor-compression cycle. A critical component in this system, and in any waste heat recovery system, is the heat exchanger that extracts the heat from the exhaust. In this study, a cross-flow microchannel heat exchanger was geometrically examined and thermally tested under laboratory conditions. The heat exchanger, referred to as the Heat Recovery Unit (HRU), was designed to transfer diesel exhaust energy to a heat transfer oil. Two methods were developed to measure the geometry of the microchannels. The first was based on image processing of microscope photographs, and the second involved an analysis of profilometer measurements. Both methods revealed that the exhaust channels (air channels) were, on average, smaller in cross-sectional area by 11% when compared to the design. The cross-sectional area of the oil channels were 8% smaller than their design. The hydraulic diameters for both channel geometries were close to their design. Hot air was used to simulate diesel engine exhaust. Thermal testing of the heat exchanger included measurements of heat transfer, effectiveness, air pressure drop, and oil pressure drop. The experimental results for the heat transfer and effectiveness agreed well with the model predictions. However, the measured air pressure drop and oil pressure drop were significantly higher than the model. The discrepancy was attributed to the model's ideal representation of the channel areas. Additionally, since the model did not account for the complex flow path of the oil stream, the measured oil pressure drop was much higher than the predicted pressure drop. The highest duty of the Heat Recovery Unit observed during the experimental tests was 12.3 kW and the highest effectiveness was 97.8%. To examine the flow distribution through the air channels, velocity measurements were collected at the outlet of the Heat Recovery Unit using a hot film anemometer. For unheated air flow, the profile measurements indicated that there was flow maldistribution. A temperature profile was measured and analyzed for a thermally loaded condition. / Graduation date: 2012