Numerical simulation of thermal behavior for electronic enclosure

Abstract

Electronic is a significant device in our daily life. To ensure its good performance, the temperature of chips must not exceed 80°C. For a long time, Computational Fluid Dynamic (CFD) has been a powerful tool to analyze fluid flow, heat exchangers, and other equipment that have been applied widely in industry. In this paper, the authors designed the electronic enclosure and used CFD Autodesk to analyze its thermal performance. The three types of electronic enclosures are a/ the enclosure without any ventilation slot; b/ the enclosure with both ventilation slots on the top and the bottom of it; c/ the enclosure with both ventilation slots on the left and right of it. The 2 same power small chips and the large chip whose power were 0.5W and 2W, respectively, were used as the heat source. Moreover, the effect of the radiation heat transfer of the surface enclosure was also analyzed. The result shows that the enclosure which has both ventilation slots on the top and bottom has more efficiency than others. Also, the radiation heat transfer plays a vital role in enclosure cooling without the fan. For that reason, covering the white coating with emissivity e=0.9 or the black coating with emissivity e=0.98 is an excellent way to decline the temperature of the enclosure by radiation heat transfer.