Heat Transfer Characteristics of High Heat Generating Integrated Circuit Chips Cooled Using Liquid Cold Plate—A Combined Numerical and Experimental Study

Abstract

Abstract This paper deals with the experimental and numerical investigations of seven integrated circuit (IC) chips cooled using the water flowing inside the cold plate at different flowrates. The study includes the supply of three different heat input cases under four different flowrates (0.063 kg/s, 0.125 kg/s, 0.25 kg/s, and 0.5 kg/s) to cool the high heat-generating IC chips mounted on the SMPS board at various positions. The optimal configuration (71-11-74-76-65-24-15) for the arrangement of the 7 IC chips is considered for the analysis. The numerical simulations are carried out using the commercial software ansys fluent (R-16) to support the experiments. Both the results (IC chips temperature) agree with each other in the error band of 8–14%. The smallest chip U6 attains the maximum temperature, as its heat attenuation rate is very high. The water flowing inside the cold plate absorbs the heat from the IC chips; by increasing the flowrate (Reynolds number increases), there is an increase in the convective heat transfer coefficient of the chips (Nusselt number increases) and ultimately cools these faster. A correlation is proposed for the Nusselt number of the chips with the Reynolds number of the flow. The results suggest that the liquid cold plate plays a vital role in the cooling of the IC chips and leads to better thermal management.