Numerical Analysis of the Effects of TPMS Topology and Relative Density on Heat Sink Cooling Performance.

The trend toward high power density in compact electronic devices has intensified the demand for enhanced thermal management. Triply periodic minimal surface (TPMS) structures are attractive for heat sink (HS) applications owing to their high surface area, interconnected flow pathways, and compact design. This study presents a computational fluid dynamics investigation of porous TPMS heat sinks with gyroid, diamond, and I-WP topologies using COMSOL Multiphysics version 5.1. The effects of geometry, network morphology (sheet and solid), and relative density (RD = 15%, 30%, and 45%) were evaluated through temperature and velocity fields, pressure drop, average Nusselt number, and Darcy friction factor. The results demonstrate that, relative to the I-WP structure, the gyroid and diamond structures achieved 10.9-12.4% and 2.9-4.7% higher average Nusselt numbers, respectively. Porous gyroid structures reduced the maximum temperature by 2.2 [K] compared with the solid counterpart due to their highly interconnected pore network. At an inlet velocity of 0.3 [m/s], the average Nusselt number increased from 11 to 43 as the relative density increased from 15% to 45%, accompanied by a pressure drop increase from 1.9 to 4 [Pa]. These findings demonstrate that porous gyroid TPMS heat sinks with optimized relative density provide an effective solution for advanced thermal management in electronics.