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 topology 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.