Numerical simulation of a novel composite microchannel for large-scale THz phased array antennas thermal management

Abstract

As terahertz (THz) phased arrays antennas (PAA) scale up, the accompanying increase in power density and heat generation poses significant challenges for thermal management. The aim of this work is to explore effective solutions for achieving an ideal uniform temperature distribution and lower peak temperature in the context of large-scale small heat sources. Considering the high-efficiency heat transfer and surface temperature uniformity of microchannel heat sinks, this paper proposes a novel composite microchannel heat sink structure based on traditional microchannel heat sinks. Using peak temperature, pressure drop, temperature uniformity, thermal stress, and thermal deformation as key indicators, a comprehensive numerical simulation analysis of the novel composite microchannel heat sink and traditional microchannel heat sinks under different Reynolds numbers ($Re$) were conducted based on computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and elasticity mechanics. The results show that the novel composite microchannel heat sink exhibits superior fluid flow and heat transfer performance with better temperature uniformity. At $Re=1500$, it achieves improvements of 11.2 %, 9.2 %, 14.6 %, and 8.2 % compared to the traditional microchannel heat sinks. Moreover, it can achieve the same peak temperature as traditional microchannel heat sinks with lower pumping power. Furthermore, it was found that the novel composite microchannel heat sink can effectively reduce the pressure drop in microfluidic systems. At $Re=1500$, the pressure drop is reduced by 37.5 %, 39 %, 31.9 %, and 35.6 % compared to the corresponding traditional microchannel heat sink. Overall, the novel composite microchannel heat sink outperforms traditional microchannel heat sinks in both flow characteristics and temperature uniformity.