During the last decades, in industrial applications the integration of electronic components shifted its focus on reliability. In fact, the high thermal power generated by electronic systems can cause system failure and even irreversible damage, due to their ongoing miniaturization and complexity. This work aims to explore solutions for the optimal design of passive heat sinks to be fabricated by additive manufacturing. The methodology involves the use of CAE and thermal topological optimization tools, to analyse the thermal loads and the heat sink performance, and consequently to optimize the heat sink design. A simple case study allows to compare three different geometrical heat sink configurations, corresponding to the optimal solutions for three different sets of constraints, namely only volume constraints, laser-powder bed process design and internal heat generation. The predominant role of heat conduction is demonstrated and significant weight reduction and high efficiency are combined in topology optimized passive heat sinks to be fabricated by AM.

在过去的几十年中，在工业应用中，电子组件的集成转移了对可靠性的关注。实际上，由于电子系统持续不断的小型化和复杂性，其产生的高热功率会导致系统故障甚至不可逆转的损坏。这项工作旨在探索用于通过增材制造来制造无源散热器的最佳设计的解决方案。该方法包括使用CAE和热拓扑优化工具来分析热负荷和散热器性能，从而优化散热器设计。一个简单的案例研究可以比较三种不同的几何散热器配置，它们对应于三种不同约束集（即仅体积约束）的最佳解决方案，激光粉末床工艺设计和内部发热。演示了热传导的主要作用，并在由AM制造的拓扑优化无源散热器中结合了显着的轻量化和高效率。