Investigation of lattice geometry effects on the steady-state thermal performance of aluminum alloy CPU coolers via finite element analysis

This study numerically investigates the effect of lattice geometry on the steady-state thermal performance of aluminum alloy CPU coolers using finite element analysis. Four heat sink (cooler) configurations with the same external dimensions and base thickness were considered. In addition to a reference heat sink with a conventional design, three lattice-based designs were developed as simple cubic (SC), body-centered cubic (BCC), and face-centered cubic (FCC) unit cell. All coolers were subjected to a constant temperature of 95 °C from the surface of base, while natural convection was modeled on the external surfaces in 28 °C ambient air. A film coefficient of 5.0x10-6 W/mm2 °C was used for the reference and SC coolers, while a higher coefficient of 1.0x10-5 W/mm2 °C was applied to the BCC and FCC coolers to represent improved convective cooling. The results show that all lattice geometries reduced both the minimum and volume-averaged temperatures compared to the solid reference heat sink. The volume average temperature decreased from 94.358 °C to 93.415 °C for the SC cooler, and to 91.804 °C and 91.446 °C for the FCC and BCC coolers, respectively. Line temperature analysis along the cooler height revealed that the BCC lattice produced the lowest path-averaged temperature, followed by FCC and SC designs. This suggests that in lattice-based coolers, the lattice design and heatsink topology can be as important as the total surface area.