Design Optimization For Heat Dissipation In Polymer Additive Manufacturing With Joule Heating

Nowadays, the use of additive manufacturing (AM) is mainly focused on the production of prototypes with the purpose of evaluating a design. This industry has become a subject of constant reinvention; in fact, an emerging application of AM is focused on creating parts with embedded electronics. However, the development of both traditional and additive manufactured electronics has led to an increase in power densities and size reduction. Consequently, thermal management has become essential in electronics, as overheating decreases reliability of the component leading to a premature failure. In this study, a polycarbonate component design with integral electrical circuitry that is fabricated by Material Extrusion process is considered. In addition to copper deposited in the Material Extrusion process for the circuitry, complementary copper is deposited to help conduct the heat generated by the joule effect. The focus of this research is to optimize the placement of metal for heat conduction. A computational parametric design study was considered, by using Finite Element Analysis (FEA) that allowed the development of a design that models heat generation and temperature in the circuitry. In conjunction with the FEA, the development of Response Surface Methodology (RSM) and linear constrained optimization, assisted in the guidance to achieve a design optimization. This guided methodology optimized the model by effectively increasing heat dissipation through the additional copper wire. The optimized model with additional deposited copper wire dissipated 50.43% of the total heat generated, whereas, previous design dissipated only 9.49% of the total heat generated by the joule heating. In addition, temperature was lowered from 118.05 â?? to 29.25 â?? degrees. This concludes in an optimization of the heat dissipated through the additional deposited wires by 81.1%; and a decrease of the overall temperature component by 75.2%