An Acoustic Analogy to Evaluate the Total Acoustic Power of a Cooling Fan Using Mesh Morpher Optimizer

Abstract

The pressure fluctuation over the fan blades can generate unpleasant noises that affect the fan performance. Therefore, the noise control is considered as a significant factor in the design process. The purpose of this study is to estimate the total acoustic power of the surface on a cooling fan as a key function to improve design parameters. The design process of a cooling fan to achieve low acoustic power can be lengthy and expensive through prototyping and experiments. The Mesh Morpher Optimizer (MMO) in ANSYS Fluent in coupling with the Powell’s model was applied to estimate the acoustic power over a cooling fan surface at a low speed. The Powell’s model in ANSYS was proved successfully in reducing the total acoustic power on the surface of the cooling fan which is shown by the numerical results. Comparison of the base model and Powell’s model, the Acoustic Power Level was reduced from 23.68 to 21.69 dB. The Surface Acoustic Power Level dropped from 62.24 to 61.26 dB. Likewise, the Surface Acoustic Power decreased from 9.67e−5 to 5.24e−5 W/m2. Also, the contour visualization results verified the success of the Powell’s model in combination of the Mesh Morpher Optimizer (MMO) to evaluate the total acoustic power and propose a new model that will assist in the design process in minimizing the manufacturing process of a new design model.