Topology optimization of laminated-sheet microchannel heat sinks based on a pseudo-three-dimensional method

Laminated-sheet microchannel heat sinks (LS-MHSs) have shown enormous potential in the thermal management of integrated chips due to their advantages of easy integration, high surface-to-volume ratio and high heat transfer efficiency. In this paper, a five-layer pseudo-3D (P3D) conjugated heat transfer model of the double-layer microchannel heat sink (DL-MHS) was established, and topology optimization (TO) was applied for optimal design of the DL-MHS. The effects of different inlet pressures and lamination methods on the optimal design were discussed, and then, the optimization results were compared with those obtained for a single-layer microchannel heat sink (SL-MHS) and conventional parallel microchannel heat sink (CP-MHS). A full-scale 3D conjugate heat transfer numerical model was also built to investigate the heat transfer and fluid flow performance of the to-pology optimized microchannel heat sink. The results showed that the topology optimized microchannel heat sink can enhance heat transfer and show a higher heat transfer and comprehensive performance compared to the conventional parallel microchannel heat sink. Under the same pumping power consumption, the topology optimization of the DL-MHS with parallel flow obtains the best heat transfer performance, which is 2.04 times that of the CP-MHSs and 1.09 times that of the SL-MHS. Under the same pumping power consumption, the topology optimization of the DL-MHS with counter flow achieves the best temperature uniformity and its maximum temperature difference is 5.0-16.9 K lower than that of the CP-MHSs and 1.6-3.4 K lower than that of the SL-MHS.