An optimization case study to design additively manufacturable porous heat sinks based on triply periodic minimal surface (TPMS) lattices

Cellular materials have been widely used in thermal management applications such as heat sinks (HSs) for electronic devices. The topology optimization technique has recently gained interest in designing the topology of HSs with optimized thermal performance. Triply periodic minimal surface (TPMS) based structures offer unique opportunities for tailoring the design and performance of HSs, but their potential has not been explored in customizing additively manufactured porous optimized HSs. Therefore, research is needed to analyze the thermal performance, such as thermal conductivity, within optimized HSs customized with TPMS structures. In this study, the thermal HSs were designed using the topology optimization technique and two unique mapping approaches; namely, averaging and gradient methods, were proposed to transform porous cellular structures to gyroid-based HSs. Unit-cell homogenization approach was used to determine the effective thermal conductivity of gyroid-sheet and gyroid-solid structures. Effect of heat transfer area on thermal transport of optimized topologies was also investigated. Computational analysis was performed to analyze and compare the thermal transport in the optimized porous and gyroid mapped HSs. Moreover, mapped structure's ability to dissipate heat was examined by calculating the maximum temperatures when applying an external heat source. Mapped gyroid-sheet structure obtained through gradient method demonstrated the effectiveness of the proposed mapping approach in terms of effective thermal conductivity. The findings of the research provide valuable guidance for customizing the topology and predicting the performance of TPMS based heat sinks in terms of pure heat conduction analysis.