Performance of a multi-stack microchannel heat sink

Abstract

The usage of a very large scale integrated circuits generate high heat fluxes and require an effective cooling system. A microchannel heat sink (MCHS) is one of the reliable cooling systems that had been applied. In terms of performance, a MCHS can be appraised by obtaining low total thermal resistance and pumping power. However, as the total thermal resistance decreases, the pumping power will increase. A few studies have been focused on the minimization of the thermal resistance and pumping power of a multi-stack MCHS. Optimization of two objective functions which are the total thermal resistance and pumping power has been done by using genetic algorithm. It is demonstrated that both objective functions can be minimized by optimizing two design variables which are the channel aspect ratio, α, and wall width ratio,β. It was found that the usage of a stacked configuration for the MCHS is able to reduce the total thermal resistance. From the optimization, it was found that the optimum number of stacks that can be implemented is three. With the three-stack configuration, the total thermal resistance found is 0.1180 K/W which is 21.8% less compared to the single-stack MCHS. However, the pumping power needed for the three-stack MCHS is increased by 0.17 % compared to single-stack which is 0.7535 W.