Multiobjective optimization of air-cooled perforated micro pin fin heat sink via an artificial neural network surrogate model coupled with NSGA-II

Abstract This research aims to create an artificial neural network (ANN) regression model for predicting the performance parameters of the perforated micro-pin fin (MPF) heat sinks for various geometric parameters and inflow conditions. A three-dimensional computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation system is developed to generate dataset samples under different operational conditions, which are specified using Latin hypercube sampling (LHS). An ANN model is first obtained by optimizing the model hyper-parameters, which are then deployed to learn from the input feature space that consists of perforation diameter, perforation location, and inflow velocity. For accurate training of the ANN, the model is trained over a range of uniformly distributed data points in the input feature space. The developed multi-layer model predicted Nusselt number and friction factor with the mean absolute percentage error of 4.45% and 1.80%, respectively. Subsequently, the developed surrogate model is used in the optimization study to demonstrate the application of the surrogate model. A multi-objective non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm (NSGA-II) is used to perform the optimization of the perforation location, diameter, and inflow conditions. Negative of the Nusselt number and friction factor are chosen as objectives to minimize. A Pareto front is obtained from the optimization study that shows a set of optimal solutions. Thermal performance of the perforated MPF is increased between 11.5% and 39.77%. The optimizer selected a significantly smaller hole diameter at a higher location and a faster speed to maximize the Nusselt number and minimize the friction factor.