CAA of an Air-Cooling System for Electronic Devices

Abstract

This paper presents the workflow and the results of fluid dynamics and aeroacoustic simulations for an air-cooling system as used in electronic devices. The setup represents a generic electronic device with several electronic assemblies with forced convection cooling by two axial fans. The aeroacoustic performance is computed using a hybrid method. In a first step, two unsteady CFD simulations using the Unsteady Reynolds-Averaged Navier-Stokes simulation with Shear Stress Transport (URANS-SST) turbulence model and the Scale Adaptive Simulation with Shear Stress Transport (SAS-SST) models were performed. Based on the unsteady flow results, the acoustic source terms were calculated using Lighthill’s acoustic analogy. Propagation of the flow-induced sound was computed using the Finite Element Method. Finally, the results of the acoustic simulation are compared with measurements and show good agreement.