An Industrial Application of Constructal Theory: A Constructal CPU Liquid Cooling Unit

This paper explores the possibility of substituting a heat pipe CPU cooler with a Liquid Cooling Unit (LCU) that embeds a net of channels for the flow of the coolant, engineered according with Constructal Theory statements and having a substantially lower installation cost. A secondary aim of this study is to verify that the heat transfer characteristics are not too inferior than those of the heat pipe. Once the general LCU configuration has been decided upon (here, a compact assembly of stacked metallic discs has been chosen), an optimization of its performance is carried out using a genetic algorithm: the objective functions of the optimization are the average solid temperature of the device and the pressure drop inside tubes, both to be minimized, and the temperature of the fluid at tubes’ outlet, which should be maximized: the last objective function enforces the maximum heat rejection from the solid. Practical questions regarding the heat rejection in PC cooling systems, like the thermal resistance of the grease included between the cooling matrix and the CPU surface are not considered. Each level of tubes can be split only in two smaller branches.