Increased heat generation in semiconductor devices for demanding applications leads to the investigation of highly efficient cooling solutions. Effective options for thermal management include passing of cooling liquid through the microchannel heat sink and using highly conductive materials. In the author's previous work, experimental and computational analyses were performed on LTCC substrates using embedded silver vias and silver columns forming microchannels. This novel technique of embedding silver vias along with forced convection using a coolant resulted in higher heat transfer rates. The present work investigates the design optimization of this cooling system (microheat exchanger) using systems optimization theory. A new multiobjective optimization problem was formulated for the heat transfer in the LTCC model using the log mean temperature difference (LMTD) method of heat exchangers. The goal is to maximize the total heat transferred and to minimize the coolant pumping power. Structural and thermal design variables are considered to meet the manufacturability and energy requirements. Pressure loss and volume of the silver metal are used as constraints. A hybrid optimization technique using sequential quadratic programming (SQP) and branch and bound method of integer programming has been developed to solve the microheat exchanger problem. The optimal design is presented and sensitivity analysis results are discussed.
Envelope Thermal Design Optimization for Urban Residential Buildings in Malawi