Reduced Physics Modeling of Two-Phase Flow through High-Density Cooling Structures

Abstract

Increasing power density in high performance microprocessors has driven research into high performance and energy efficient methods of cooling including both single-phase and two-phase liquid cooling. These approaches employ coldplates with complex high-density cooling structures such as fine-pitch microstructures, linked-pin-fins, metal foams, etc., to achieve high heat transfer coefficients. The development of coldplates, especially for two-phase cooling, with such complex cooling structures requires computationally efficient high fidelity thermal models to evaluate the device and system performance under different cooling configurations and operating environments. In this work, a novel reduced physics model based on porous media approximation was developed with homogeneous equilibrium model assumptions for the two-phase flow in the coolant flow domain. For an exemplar complex cooling structure, this reduced physics model produced pressure drop values close to those obtained from full-physics simulations while utilizing >50X less computational nodes and >100X less computational time. Acknowledgment: “The information, data, or work presented herein was funded in part by the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E), U.S. Department of Energy, under Award Number DE-AR0001577. The views and opinions of authors expressed herein do not necessarily state or reflect those of the United States Government or any agency thereof.”