Gyroid TPMS heat sink for SSD cooling: Thermal performance and hydraulic analysis

This study numerically investigates Gyroid triply periodic minimal surface (TPMS) heat sinks for localized cooling of an M.2 2280 solid-state drive (SSD). The main motivation is the increasing thermal load of compact storage devices, where controller hot spots may trigger thermal throttling and reduce reliability. Unlike idealized TPMS studies with uniform wall temperatures or uniformly distributed heat fluxes, the present model accounts for SSD-specific heat localization: 70% of the total 5 W heat generation is assigned to the controller and 30% to the NAND chips, with a thermal interface material layer included between the chips and the aluminum heat sink. Two Gyroid configurations, G20 and G10, with identical nominal porosity of approximately 0.8 are compared with a conventional fin heat sink and a flat plate at inlet air velocities of 0.5–3.0 m/s. The results show that the G10 Gyroid provides the strongest hot-spot suppression, reducing the maximum controller temperature by up to 28% compared with the fin heat sink at low flow rates. However, this benefit is accompanied by a substantial hydraulic penalty, with pressure drops more than 25 times higher than those of the finned design at the highest flow rate. The study therefore identifies Gyroid TPMS heat sinks as promising candidates for space-constrained thermal management when maximum chip temperature is prioritized over pumping-power efficiency.