January 15, 2018
Optimization of passive cooling system
Industry: Electronics | Product: pSeven | Company: Thercon-LHP
Objective
The goal of this optimization problem was to increase the efficiency of aluminum heat sinks, used as PC cooling systems with natural convection.
The vapor and liquid lines of the three loop heat pipes’ (LHP) condensers cooled by the aluminum heat sink had to be positioned in an optimal way. This would guarantee the most intensive heat transfer and the uniform temperature distribution in the cooling fin.
Challenges
Given is a wide range of input parameters and objective functions:
- 9 parameters and 3 objectives for the vertical heat sink
- 6 parameters and 3 objectives for horizontal heat sink
The built-in optimizer of the cooling simulation software package defined the design of experiments with the set of ~700 points for the horizontal heat sink and of ~20 000 points for the vertical one. Three-objective optimization is impossible with the built-in optimizer.
Solution
Two multi-objective optimization problems of positioning the holes to install the loops both in the vertical and horizontal heat sinks were solved using pSeven. The task was to minimize the temperature of the cooling loops in the central processing units area and decrease their temperature values span.
Results
With pSeven, optimal solutions were found in 400 calls to the solver for the vertical heat sink and in 200 for the horizontal one.
- Results for the horizontal heat sink:
- T0 value increased by 14.5%
- T1 value decreased by 7%
- T2 value increased by 2%
- Results for the vertical heat sink:
- T0 value decreased by 2.5%
- T1 value decreased by 5.5%
- T2 value decreased by 5%
Temperature values span for the horizontal heat sink decreased from 114.3 to 16.1, and from 4.5 to 1.2 for the vertical one. All the temperature values remain within the defined limits.
About Thercon-LHP
Thercon-LHP is a leading developer and manufacturer of loop heat pipes (LHP) — highly efficient heat transfer devices. The company staff includes professionals with unique experience in the development of heat transfer devices and thermal control systems. The academic adviser of Thercon-LHP is Yuriy Maydanik, a State Prize laureate and Doctor of Engineering, the author of more than 200 scientific publications and 60 patents.
Contact: Tatyana Linder, Design Engineer, Thercon-LHP
Email: lhp@tcontr.com