Design and Performance Evaluation of Constructal Microchannel Network Heatsinks

Abstract

This work presents the development and analysis of constructal microchannel network architectures for heat dissipation. The network configurations are characterized by multiple flow ramifications and changes in length and hydraulic diameter scales through each ramification level. Architectures investigated experimentally in the past years have adopted constant scaling rules throughout their ramification levels. In this study, constructal theory inspires the design of network architectures with variable scaling rules and up to three ramification levels (N). As a result, it was verified that constructal networks allowed thermal resistance reduction of 15% (N = 2) and 42% (N = 3) for a micro heat sink at a characteristic operational regime. Architecture's selection criterion using performance curves is proposed and it was also demonstrated that the bifurcated network with diameter ratio according to Hess–Murray law is not appropriate for heat dissipation purposes in miniaturized devices.