Design of PCM-based heat sinks through topology optimization

Ever-increasing heat fluxes of electronic components ask for higher performance of devices responsible for their cooling. Against that background, PCM-based heat sinks – because of their compactness, and effectiveness – are well-established solutions for thermal management issues. Even though soluti...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of physics. Conference series 2023-05, Vol.2509 (1), p.12001
Main Authors: Bianco, Nicola, Fragnito, Andrea, Iasiello, Marcello, Mauro, Gerardo Maria
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Electronic components
Enthalpy
Heat
Heat flux
Heat sinks
Heat transfer
Hyperbolic functions
Isotropic material
Material properties
Numerical models
Optimization
Parameterization
Physics
Thermal management
Thermal resistance
Thermodynamics
Topology optimization
Two dimensional models
Wall temperature
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Summary:Ever-increasing heat fluxes of electronic components ask for higher performance of devices responsible for their cooling. Against that background, PCM-based heat sinks – because of their compactness, and effectiveness – are well-established solutions for thermal management issues. Even though solutions for the thermal enhancement of PCM devices have been widely presented, new ways to optimize such systems are emerging. Among them, this work investigates the application of density-based topology optimization to define innovative heat sinks design able to minimize thermal resistance under constant wall temperature. A 2D numerical model is developed by means of a finite element tool. The heat equation is solved for the topology optimization problem with the objective of minimizing the average temperature, considering further manufacturing restrictions. Solid-isotropic-material-with-penalization (SIMP) method is applied to link the design variable to material properties. Parameterization of Helmholtz filter’s minimum feature size and projection based on the hyperbolic tangent function is performed, showing improved performance as well as feature size decrease. The optimized prototype – with PCM – is then simulated with the enthalpy-porosity model to assess the benefits, i.e ., reduction in the melting time, with respect to the baseline. Results show the potential of optimizing heat sinks via a topology-based approach and confirm it as a promising tool for finding new heat sink geometry, whatever the application.
ISSN:1742-6588
1742-6596
DOI:10.1088/1742-6596/2509/1/012001