Optimal Placement of Electronic Components to Minimize Heat Flux Nonuniformities

Development of electronic devices and systems with increased capability and good reliability will require improved thermal management techniques. Technology improvements such as embedded heat pipes, integrated pumped fluid loops, and integrated high conductivity thermal spreaders such as annealed pyrolytic graphite provide advances that can enable more powerful devices in ever-decreasing package sizes. Although technology innovations provide one solution path, an alternative method that has not received much attention is simply optimized component placement. The present approach provides a fast method for determining optimized component placement that approaches a uniform distribution of heat flux. The result is improved thermal performance of electronic systems. A tool was developed which can optimally place any number of components within a rectangular domain. Optimized results were obtained for 18 uniform and 11 non-uniform components within 20 s and 7 s, respectively, using a 2.5GHz Core™ Duo processor. The approach presented in this paper is especially useful in situations where limited or no thermophysical and environmental conditions are readily available for the problem at hand and can be utilized in a variety of industries including microelectronics and satellite development.