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 solutions about 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 features 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 topology-based approach and confirm it as promising tool for finding new heat sink geometry, whatever the application.