Heat Dissipation Optimization Study of Active Phased Array Antenna Microchannel

This work optimizes the liquid-cooled microchannels on the cold plate using a variable-density topology optimization [1] approach to increase the heat dissipation of transmit-receive modules within active phased array antennas and their dependability. Proposing a system-level channel heat dissipation, board-level and component-level sets make up the structure of the system-level channel cooling, with channel branches distributing flow from the board-level channels to the component-level microchannels. With fluid energy dissipation [2] and average temperature as goals, a two-dimensional variable-density topology optimization approach was used to optimize the microchannel architectures in COMSOL Multiphysics software. Thermal-fluid coupling simulations were performed using ICEPAK finite element software to compare the heat dissipation performance between system-level channel cooling and cold plate cooling, as well as the heat transfer efficiency between the optimized topology channels and conventional parallel cold plates. The finite element simulation results show that the U-shaped topology significantly improves the heat dissipation efficiency at the cold plate position when compared to the parallel channel construction at that location. Z-shaped topology at the transmit/receive module cover plate location offers better heat dissipation performance than parallel channels at the module cover plate position in system-level channel construction. Furthermore, the heat dissipation efficiency of the system-level channels is much higher than that of cold plate cooling.