• Zhou, Y.
• Seat, M. H.
• Kærn, Martin Ryhl
• Kanbur, Baris Burak
• Markussen, Wiebke Brix
• Duan, F.

Abstract

Cold plates are widely used in closed-loop indirect cooling applications in the thermal management of electronics and batteries, particularly for devices with high heat flux. This paper presents a new cold plate design with a cooling cavity that was supported and filled by body-centered cubic (BCC) elements using the selective laser melting (SLM) technique. The powder of SS316L was used during the metal additive manufacturing process. The plate dimensions were 50 mm×50 mm×6 mm while the height of the cavity was 4 mm inside the plate; thus, the BCC elements had the same height as the cavity. A heater with a heat flux of 1049.1±44.9 W/m2 was used to mimic the high heat flux battery operations. The experimental setup was operated by circulating the water in the closed-loop with a flow rate of 3.4 L/h and temperatures of 15.9 °C, 20.1 °C, and 24.6 °C, respectively. The cooling process was initiated when the heated surface reached the surface temperatures of 40.0 °C, 42.5 °C, and 45.0 °C and it continued until reaching the target surface temperatures of 32.5 °C and 35.0 °C, which were reasonable surface temperatures in Singapore’s tropical climate whilst they were also in the suggested operating temperature range of 15.0 °C-35.0 °C. To cool down the heated plate below 35.0 °C, the cooling time was 60 s when the coolant temperature was 15.9 °C but it increased to 270.7 s for the coolant temperature of 24.6 °C in case of the initial surface temperature of 40.0 °C. When the cooling process was initiated from the surface temperature of 45.0 °C instead of 40.0 °C, the cooling time rose to 91 s and 366.0 s for the coolant temperatures of 15.9 °C and 24.6 °C, respectively. Overall, decrease of coolant temperature by 4.2-4.5 °C provided decrement in cooling time by nearly 50% but also resulted in higher energy consumption to cool down the coolant (water). Future pathways and further improvements were also mentioned.

Topics

• surface
• selective laser melting