Microchannel Heat Sink Design Based on Topology Optimization

Abstract

Microchannel heat sink design consists in an innovative technology which has been studied as alternative to increase cooling efficiency of small electronic devices, such as high-end microprocessors of CPUs. These electronics devices dissipate a large amount of heat, which requires very efficient cooling systems. Microchannels constructed on a conductivity body allow obtaining an efficient heat sink design having better thermal dissipation with small mass and volume, and large convective heat transfer coefficient, and, thus, suitable for cooling compact areas of small electronic devices. Thus, the main objective of this work is the study of a methodology to develop a microchannel heat sink design through the application of the Topology Optimization Method, which allows the distribution of a limited amount of material, inside a given design domain, in order to obtain an optimized system design. This method combines the Finite Element Method (FEM) and Sequential Linear Programming (SLP) to find, systematically, an optimized layout design for microchannels in heat sinks. Essentially, the topology optimization problem applied to channel fluid flow consists of determining which points of a given design domain (small heat sink) should be fluid, and which points should be solid to satisfy a multi-objective function that maximizes the heat dissipation, with minimum pressure drop. In this proposed methodology, computational simulations of some optimized microchannel layouts are employed to validate the implemented topology optimization algorithm. Some obtained results are shown to illustrate the methodology.