Abstract

The thermal design of natural convection heat sinks is critical to the heat management of electronic devices. In this paper, topology optimization (TO) with a new parameter advancing scheme is employed to study the effect of the heating power, heat source size, allowed volume and material thermal conductivity on the optimized design of natural convection heat sinks. Except for the heating power, the other three factors also play an important role on the optimization results. For the small heating power, TO predicts the tree-like heat sink with many secondary-branches to improve heat conduction, but the specific structure is highly dependent on the heat source size, allowed volume and material thermal conductivity. For the large heating power, TO prefers to produce the taper-like heat sink where the tiny branches fade away to adapt to the strong flow, and the influences of the other three factors are reduced. However, two primary branches that connect the heat source and top corners of the design domain always exist, indicating that they are the most effective ways to improve heat transfer. This work has highlighted the impact of different parameters in TO of natural convection heat sinks and provides a more in-depth understanding of the design guidelines.

摘要

自然对流散热器的热设计对于电子设备的热管理至关重要。本文采用新的参数推进方案拓扑优化（TO），研究了加热功率、热源尺寸、允许体积和材料导热系数对自然对流散热器优化设计的影响。除加热功率外，其他三个因素对优化结果也有重要影响。对于较小的加热功率，TO预测具有许多次分支的树状散热器以改善热传导，但具体结构高度依赖于热源尺寸、允许体积和材料热导率。对于大加热功率，TO更喜欢制作锥形散热片，细小分支逐渐消失以适应强流，并减少其他三个因素的影响。然而，连接热源和设计域顶角的两个主要分支始终存在，这表明它们是改善传热的最有效方法。这项工作突出了自然对流散热器 TO 中不同参数的影响，并提供了对设计指南的更深入理解。