Optimal mechanical and thermal architecture of high-conductivity inserts for cooling an electronic piece

Abstract

Highly conductive inserts improve heat removal from electronic components remarkably; however, using these inserts is associated with a side effect: the mechanical strength deterioration of the piece. In this research, based on the constructal theory, the architecture of these inserts is optimized in such a way that the lowest maximum temperature and highest mechanical strength of the disc-shaped piece are achieved. Here, three patterns for the configuration of inserts embedded in the disc are studied, namely radial, dendritic with one level of pairing and dendritic with two levels of pairing. The total amount of high-conductivity inserts material is fixed, while the geometrical parameters of the inserts like length, the bifurcating locations and the angles of bifurcations are considered as degrees of freedom. It was observed that when 16 inserts were invoked, maximum temperature and stress were minimized. Results showed that changing the structure from radial to dendritic with one bifurcation causes a decrease in the maximum temperature and stress of about 17% and 3.2%, respectively. Also, it was seen that increasing the complexity of the structure by increasing the number of bifurcations from one to two leads to 5.6% reduction and 1% increment in minimal maximum temperature and optimal maximum stress, respectively.