Numerical study on flow and heat transfer characteristics of microchannel designed using topological optimizations method

Microchannel has demonstrated advantages in the thermal management of integrated chip. In this study, the topology optimization method is applied for designing a topological microchannel to optimize the performances of both heat dissipation and pressure drop. To validate the performance of the topological structure, the flow and heat transfer characteristics of topological microchannel under non-uniform heating flux are numerically studied. The topological structure is designed to cool a heating area of 10 mm x 10 mm with 4 hotspots. Heat flux is 40 W/cm(2) in the hotspot area, while it is only 15 W/cm(2) in the rest heating area. The results of heat dissipation performance and pressure drop are compared with those of conventional straight microchannel. Numerical result shows that, compared to the straight microchannel, the hotspot temperature and pressure drop of topological microchannel can be reduced by 4 and 0.6 kPa, respectively, under the flow rate of 2.2x10(-4) kg/s. The coefficient of performance (COP) of topological microchannel can be 16.1% better than that of straight microchannel, which can be attributed to the effects of optimized bifurcation and confluence structural of topological microchannel.