Constructal design of a nanofluid cooling channel with sidewall ribs and cavities in a rectangular heat generation body

Abstract

The heat dissipation optimization of electronic devices with cooling channels is a hot research issue. A nanofluid cooling channel (CCL) model with sidewall ribs and cavities in a rectangular heat generation body is established. The CCL is designed with minimum complex function composed of the maximum temperature difference (MTD) and pumping power consumption (PPC). When the volumes of the CCL, sidewall ribs and cavities are constrained, the optimal nanoparticle volume fraction, aspect ratio, cavity radius and sidewall rib radius of the CCL are 1%, 1.43, 1.04 and 1.30 within their discussed ranges, and the complex function after constructal design is reduced by up to 14.3%. For the multi-objective optimization by using NSGA-II, the PPC gained by TOPSIS decision-making strategy is abated by 28.4%, and the MTD is augmented by 8.0%. The deviation index of this strategy is 0.250, which is the lowest one among the discussed strategies. Thus, the optimal structure gained by this strategy can be served as the optimal design solution. The novelty of this paper is the application of constructal theory to the structure optimization of nanofluid CCL model, which provides better comprehensive performance with certain system constraints.

Keywords

• Constructal design
• Rectangular heat generation body
• Cooling channel with nanofluid
• Sidewall ribs
• Cavities
• Multi-objective optimization