Optimal palmate leaf-like conductive network for cooling a heat-generating volume

Abstract

With the development of high-density integration and the miniaturization of electronic devices, extracting the heat generated in electronic devices has become a major issue. Conductive cooling is an effective method to extract the heat generated by electronic devices. The fundamental “volume-to-point” problem was first put forward and solved by Bejan by using a constructal theory, that is, how to construct the efficient conductive network with high thermal conductivity to cool a heat-generating volume with low thermal conductivity. In the present study, we use a palmate leaf-like conductive network to cool a heat-generating volume. We first analytically optimize the conductive network structure and then implement numerical simulations to validate the analytical result. The numerical results indicate that the optimal palmate leaf-like conductive network greatly reduces the maximum temperature difference between heat sinks and the volume. Furthermore, we show numerically that the optimal palmate leaf-like conductive network has a greater tolerance for network channel damage and effectively increases network robustness.