A novel design of hybrid slot jet and mini-channel cold plate for electronics cooling

Abstract

In the current paper, a high-performance cold plate based on single-phase jet impingement and mini-channel heat sink technologies is described for automotive electronics cooling. A manifold system with cylindrical connection tubes and tapered inserts is designed to distribute the coolant uniformly within an individual module and between three different modules. A two-level (local-global) modeling method is adopted to design and optimize the cold plate. A unit cell model is used to analyze the sensitivity of the heat sink performance to material selection and geometric parameters. A system level flow distribution study is then conducted to maximize flow uniformity both within a single module and across the three modules in parallel. A conjugate flow and heat transfer model is developed to verify the flow uniformity and heat transfer performance of the cold plate as a whole. Based on numerical studies, it is found that the final cold plate design achieves flow uniformity (to within 1.5%) with a maximum to minimum base temperature difference of approximately 3 K and an average heat transfer coefficient of 34 kW/(m2K). The total pressure drop of the cold plate is 9.36 kPa. Ongoing work includes experimental testing of the cold plate including validation of the expected pressure drop and heat transfer performance.