Thermal performances of Gyroid-fin heat sink for power chips

Abstract

As a kind of triply periodic minimal surface (TPMS), the Gyroid-TPMS is utilized for fluid cooling system with good hydraulic and thermal performances. In this study, a special fin structure based on Gyroid-TPMS, referred to as the Gyroid-fin, is designed to replace the plate-fin of the conventional heat sink (HS) for cooling the integrated power chips. The multi-physical simulations are modelled for numerical analysis, and the specific test system is designed to compare the thermal performances of Gyroid-fin HS and plate-fin HS. The numerical simulation indicates that the Gyroid-fin can induce eccentric helical flows and enhance the convective heat transfer significantly. The temperature distributions range from 35.69 to 46 °C on the surface of the plate-fin to 38.5−43.2 °C on that of Gyroid-fin. The temperature difference is reduced from 10.31 °C of plate-fin HS down to less than 4.7 °C of Gyroid-fin HS. Besides, the Gyroid-fin provides an area of 850.3 cm2 for heat dissipation which is almost 3 times of the plate-fin, and the thermal resistance of Gyroid-fin HS is about 15 % less than that of plate-fin HS. The Gyroid-fin HS has a better temperature uniformity in all directions than plate-fin HS. With the flow rate increasing, both the maximum surface temperature and the surface temperature difference of Gyroid-fin HS and plate-fin HS will decrease, and the pressure drops of Gyroid-fin HS and plate-fin HS will increase. For the balance of pressure drop and thermal resistance, the operating point can be set at the flow rate of 6 L/min for both Gyroid-fin HS and plate-fin HS. Moreover, for the same value of thermal resistance, the Gyroid-fin HS requires a lower flow rate than plate-fin HS, and it also means less pump power cost for the liquid cooling system. This work helps to solve the constraint of heat sinks that heat dissipation capacity of electronic devices in high power density applications.