Experimental investigation of roll bond liquid cooling plates for server chip heat dissipation

Abstract

High-performance data centers have high heat dissipation requirements. In order to solve the problems such as complex structure, high manufacturing cost, and long manufacturing cycle in the technology of server cooling, roll bond liquid cooling plates (RBLCP) for server chip heat dissipation were proposed in this work. A performance test platform for RBLCP was set up. The influence of bending, flow channel shape, flow rate, and heating power on RBLCP performance was investigated via experiences. The results show that bending has little effect on its heat transfer performance. However, with the increase in flow rate, the flow characteristics of RBLCP after bending is worse than that of RBLCP before bending. The heat transfer performance and flow characteristics of the RBLCP are mainly determined by the bending degree of the flow channel. Compared with the RBLCP which bending to “Z” shape (Z-RBLCP), the RBLCP which bending to “N” shape (N-RBLCP) has better comprehensive performance. The heat transfer performance of the RBLCP improves with the increase in flow rate, but the variation is small at a high flow rate. The total temperature uniformity of the cooling plate decreases with the increase of flow rate and heating power, while its local temperature uniformity increases with the increase of flow rate and decreases with the increase of heating power. To ensure that the temperature and temperature difference of heat source are low, RBLCP should be avoided working at a low flow rate. When the heating power is 100 W, and the flow rate is 35 L/h, N-RBLCP has a minimum thermal resistance Rt = 0.0613 K/W. RBLCP has a low cost and can meet the heat dissipation requirements of server chips.