Biomimetic fish-fin microchannels for energy-efficient manifold liquid cooling

초록

Thermal management is increasingly demanded in energy-related facilities such as high-power electronics, data center, aircrafts, etc. Compared to traditional air cooling, liquid cooling is advantageous like high thermal conductivity, high thermal capacity, scalable manufacturing, but more efficient design of liquid cooling is always needed. In this study, we propose a biomimetic Fish-Fin Microchannel (FFMC) structure and conduct a comprehensive numerical investigation of its performance under varying structural parameters. The influences of key parameters were identified among fin height, fin thickness, wall thickness, and tilt angle. The structural parameters are then further optimized using a surrogate model with prediction errors below 10%. It is demonstrated that the parameter-optimized FFMC achieves a 21.2% reduction in pressure drop at 2 mL/s while maintaining nearly identical thermal resistance compared with the reference structure. At a fixed temperature rise of Delta Tmax = 60 K, the maximum achievable heat flux was as high as 1735 W/cm2, only requiring 1.015 W/cm2 of pumping power. The FFMC shows great advantages over conventional microchannels, offering a promising liquid cooling solution for advanced thermal management.

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