IAETSD JOURNAL FOR ADVANCED RESEARCH IN APPLIED SCIENCES, VOLUME 4, ISSUE 5, OCT /2017

ISSN (ONLINE): 2394-8442

A REVIEW OF OPTIMAL RADIAL BLOWER DESIGN FOR

ELECTRONIC COOLING SYSTEM
1KiranPatil, 1Subham Kharche, 1Abhijit Mate, 1Satish Chaudhari
2Dr. Ashwini Kumar, 3Prof. Kiran Londhe, 4Prof. Vipul R. Kaushik
1UG Students, Department of Mechanical Engineering, H.S.B.P.V.Ts GOI, College of Engineering- Parikrama,
Ahmednagar-414701, Maharashtra, India.

2-3Professor (Asst.), Department of Mechanical Engineering, H.S.B.P.V.Ts GOI, College of Engineering- Parikrama,
Ahmednagar-414701, Maharashtra, India.

4Professor (Asst.), Department of Electronics and Telecommunication Engineering, H.S.B.P.V.Ts GOI, College of Engineering-
Parikrama, Ahmednagar-414701, Maharashtra, India.

2Corresponding Authors E-mails: aknitjsr08@gmail.com2

ABSTRACT.

Cooling system fans have been used to cool electronics for a long time. However, the recent trends of changes in
electronic devices call for an evolved electronic cooling fan which can effectively dissipate heat in electronics that have even
more power in smaller packages. Heat production in much equipment continues to rise as compact consumer electronics
products increase in power and functionality. Though the size of electronics may be small, the amount of heat generated can be
enormous. A few examples of this case are: laptop computers with powerful processors, projection systems in which heat is
generated by the light source, and even set-top boxes. To generate air flow around heat generating components in electronic
equipment and to dispel heat effectively requires active cooling with the help of fans. In the present paper a review report on
comprehensive description for thermal conditions for cooling purpose with the help of an optimally designed radial blower, for
electronic devices has been summarized.

KEYWORDS: CFD, Icepack, Radial Blower, Fan Curve, Thermal Analysis, Macro Model, System Level Modeling, Experimental
Measurements

INTRODUCTION AND LITERATURE SURVEY

Fans are commonly used to refrigerate electrical machines when air forced cooling is required. They are rather simple solutions that
can considerably improve the thermal performance of electrical machines, so the fan analysis could become an important point during
the thermal design of electrical machines. These are widely used for electrical machines cooling when natural convection is insufficient
to ensure a maximum working temperature and liquid cooling systems are too complex for specific applications. Fans impulse airflows
over motor surfaces and generate forced convection as an alternative to the natural convection. So these systems can increase the
external heat transfer. On the other hand, liquid cooling systems improvements are much higher than forced convection. But they
need a more complex tubes system to transport the liquid, with its drive system, and a final heat exchange to transport the heat to the
ambient by natural or forced air convection.

To Cite This Article: Kiran Patil, Subham Kharche, Abhijit Mate, Satish Chaudhari, Dr. Ashwini Kumar, Prof. Kiran Londhe and
Prof. Vipul R. Kaushik,. A REVIEW OF OPTIMAL RADIAL BLOWER DESIGN FOR ELECTRONIC COOLING SYSTEM.
Journal for Advanced Research in Applied Sciences. Volume 4, Issue 5, Oct-2017; Pages: 41-47
42. Kiran Patil, Subham Kharche, Abhijit Mate, Satish Chaudhari, Dr. Ashwini Kumar, Prof. Kiran Londhe and Prof. Vipul R.
Kaushik,. A REVIEW OF OPTIMAL RADIAL BLOWER DESIGN FOR ELECTRONIC COOLING SYSTEM. Journal for
Advanced Research in Applied Sciences. Volume 4, Issue 5, Oct-2017 Pages: 41-47

The control of fluid flow is a central component of fluid mechanics, since it holds great promises for manipulating the inherent
behavior of a fluid system. The objective of flow control may be to delay/advance transition, to suppress turbulence, or to
prevent/promote separation. Flow control involves passive and active devices causing beneficial changes including drag reduction lift
enhancement, mixing augmentation, heat transfer enhancement and flow-induced noise suppression. In passive methods, the flow is
modified without external energy expenditure. Some advantages of passive control are less moving parts, simple and less expensive
devices. However, they often do not work well at off-design conditions. That is why, during the last decade, emphasis has been on the
development of active control methods, in which energy, or auxiliary power is introduced into the flow. In general, all the active
devices have two primary advantages for flow control that are not achievable by passive techniques. First, active control techniques are
able to adjust the actuation if it is necessary, and secondly, they can be used to control complex, dynamical processes.

Although, there are number of methods in electronic cooling to maintain the unwanted heat dissipation during the operation of such
devices, which have been studied and investigated by different researchers. Chung and Luo, (2002) have analyzed for unsteady heat
transfer by using jet impingement cooling system. Turbulence statics in the stagnation region for an axis symmetric impinging jet
cooling system was arranged (Nishino et al., 1996). Heat pipe cooling technology for desktop PC and CPU has been used by Kum et
al., (2003). An experimental investigation for the thermal performance of an asymmetrical flat plate heat pipe has been conducted
(Wang and Vafai, 2000). CPU with variable heat sink base plate thickness has been analyzed thermally (Mohan and Govindarajan,
2010) by using CFD. Further by the same authors, an experimental and CFD analysis of heat sinks with base plate for CPU cooling has
been conducted (Mohan and Govindarajan, 2011) and was observed that the velocity field around the heat sink was affected by the
presence of the other components inside the chassis as well as the chassis walls which redirect the hot air back into CPU heat sink. A
numerical study was presented on six CPU heat sinks of the same model, namely a copper heat sink, aluminum heat sink and graphite-
metal heat sinks to analyze the temperature distribution and thermal resistance (Liu et al., 2012) and was concluded that the heat
dissipation effect of graphite-copper heat sink is better than that of copper one and far better than that of aluminum one, which on
further come to the final conclusion that a reasonable design need to consider material and thickness of the base, height and thickness
of the fin along with the heat transfer area of sink. It was the basis of the references for the design of CPU heat dissipation and some
necessary theoretical basis for the cooling design of the electronic equipments.

A heat sink was designed on geometry based optimization tool with the principle of superposition, whose analysis can be simplified by
using a repeating cell (Stadler, 2008). The majority of this work was done with a constant surface temperature boundary condition
which had consistently led to designs with one large square channel located closed to the hot surface being shown as the best solution,
which resulted in contrast to current designs. Ayli et al., (2013), have investigated for cooling of electronic equipments to design
vortex promoters. Different shapes of vortex promoters were used in the experimental study for turbulent flow and the results were
used to validate the previous computational works. The work was related to experimental and computational analysis of heat transfer
in electronic systems. An analysis and modeling for heat sink with rectangular fins with through holes was done for efficient cooling of
electronic devices for optimal performance (Sukumar et al., 2013) and was observed that in the sense of junction temperature
interrupted fins are efficient than continuous and was also found that through holes for the interrupted fins has better performance
than interrupted rectangular fins of heat sinks and reduction in weight due to more material removal from the standard.

Light emitting diode (LED) is a modern lighting device in which if the heat dissipation mechanism is not well designed, the induced
high temperature will cause the reduction of illumination and life time of lamp. Therefore, the heat sink design has become a key
technology for LED lighting device. It was designed and analyzed by Chu et al., (2015), for LED cooling purpose. By using CFD
software FLUENT, heat flux and temperature around the heat sink were analyzed, and the surface temperature distribution was also
investigated. Liu and Garimella, (2004), have analyzed for optimal thermal performance of micro-channels heat sinks and the results
obtained by them were demonstrated that the models developed offer sufficiently accurate predictions for practical designs, while at
the same time being quite straightforward to use. The comparative study of heat sink having fins of various profiles namely
rectangular, Trapezoidal, rectangular Interrupted, square, circular inline and staggered, has been thermally analyzed by using CFD
(Kansal and Laad, 2015) and was observed that the optimum cooling is achieved by the heat sink design which contains circular pin
fins. An experimental analysis of radial heat sink was proposed by Abhijit et al., (2016) for cooling performance of 3 conductor
profiles, namely LM sort pin-fin conductor, heat sink with staggered form pin-fins and heat sink with tallest fins on outside. The recent
review report summarized by Kumar et al., (2017) is also helpful to the researchers seeking to more idea about importance of cooling
systems in electronic field.

However, a number of literature surveys may be done for electronic cooling systems by using heat pipe and heat sinks as above, but
very few are available with respect to blower design for optimal cooling performance. For example, an investigation for flow and heat
transfer in ultra-sonic micro-blower device for electronic cooling applications has been performed (Ghaffari et al., 2016).
43. Kiran Patil, Subham Kharche, Abhijit Mate, Satish Chaudhari, Dr. Ashwini Kumar, Prof. Kiran Londhe and Prof. Vipul R.
Kaushik,. A REVIEW OF OPTIMAL RADIAL BLOWER DESIGN FOR ELECTRONIC COOLING SYSTEM. Journal for
Advanced Research in Applied Sciences. Volume 4, Issue 5, Oct-2017 Pages: 41-47

It was found that, the preferred operating frequency of the piezoelectric actuator occurs at an ultrasonic frequency of 25 kHz, meaning
that this device can function with low noise. The micro-blower axial velocity profile shows similar behavior to high Reynolds number
turbulent free jets in the far field, including a self-similar profile. In the near field, it has significant deviation, showing a sharper peak
than a steady jet. Both free and impinging flow fields differ from a steady jet in this region. The characteristics of piezoelectric micro-
blowers for separation flow control were shown in a dynamic way (Chovet et al., 2016) and were found that the micro-blower has the
ability to create a linear response when an input signal is assigned. The velocity response of the micro-blower was measured and the
velocity dependencies to the actuation, for a square input signal, have been investigated to highlight the key parameters of the device.
Phase locking Piv measurements were also obtained and showed the capability of the micro-blower for flow control. Phase-average
vortex centers are well identified and can be detected throughout the injection transient flow when an input square signal is used. The
flexibility and the simplicity of such device are interesting advantages in comparison to others actuators.

Detailed level Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) models for fans and radial blowers involve information about blades geometry,
flow angles, blades rotational speed, and flow approach velocities. Accurate simulations of such models require large numbers of mesh
points which is beyond the allocated time and available resources for engineering design cycles. When dealing with system or board
level thermal analysis, where a fan or a blower is among many components need to be modeled, a macro representation of a fan or a
blower is preferred. A macro model for a fan is a plane surface that induces pressure across as the flow passes through it. The
pressure-airflow relationship is taken from the fan curve provided by the fan manufacturer. A macro model for a radial blower is
more involved because of the 90 flow turn inside the blowers housing and induced flow swirl caused by impeller blades. The need to
capture the flow turn and induced swirl becomes more pronounced when simulating multiple interacting blowers inside a blower tray.

TYPES OF ELECTRONIC COOLING FANS

Typically, there are two types of electronic equipment cooling fans that are frequently used: radial blower fans and axial fans. The main
difference between these two types of electronic cooling fans is in their pressure and flow characteristics.

Fig.1. (a) A typical fan Fig.1. (b) A typical blower

Electronic fans like radial blowers move air vertically to the blower axis and provide low flow rates against high pressures. Conversely,
axial fans move in parallel to the axis of the fans offering a configuration of high flow rates with low pressures. To find the right
electronic cooling fans for your applications and to select the best electronic cooling fans, obtain an accurate estimate of the heat that
needs to be dissipated and check the cooling requirement which is most appropriate to the electronic application. Sometimes,
combining fans in parallel or series blowing air side by side or stacked one upon another can help achieve the desired airflow without
increasing the size or fan diameter. This can potentially double the flow rate volume and can best be used in electronic systems that
have low resistance and need more cooling. However, the combined performance curve of multiple fans could be unstable, leading to
unpredictable behavior of the cooling fan, motor construction, or the operating point. Always check if you system can handle multiple
fans.
44. Kiran Patil, Subham Kharche, Abhijit Mate, Satish Chaudhari, Dr. Ashwini Kumar, Prof. Kiran Londhe and Prof. Vipul R.
Kaushik,. A REVIEW OF OPTIMAL RADIAL BLOWER DESIGN FOR ELECTRONIC COOLING SYSTEM. Journal for
Advanced Research in Applied Sciences. Volume 4, Issue 5, Oct-2017 Pages: 41-47

Fig.2. A typical PC blower

ELECTRONIC EQUIPMENT COOLING FANS SPECIFICATIONS

Minimum noise levels so it does not interfere with your work environment. There are external adjustments that can be made to reduce
the noise level of a fan, but any alteration to the fan itself may damage it. Some of the electric specifications you should consider
before purchasing a cooling fan for your system include motor voltage, power output, and size. A large fan may not be able to fit into
your system even though it may offer increased cooling capabilities. Similarly, a high voltage fan may provide more cooling but will
also require more power to operate. An appropriate size for the application, for this one should evaluate the thickness, length, and
diameter of the fans youre considering. Also check the casing and dimensions of the enclosure to get the right sized fan. Some of the
custom features in electronic equipment fans include variable speed and flow, over temperature protection (causing the power supply
to be turned off automatically if critical temperatures are exceeded), fault detection, and a locked rotor.

BASIC AERODYNAMICS

Fans are of such common use that a basic understanding of the aerodynamics is appropriate. This understanding begins with the
recognition that the blades of a fan propeller resemble the wing of an airplane and as such follow the same aerodynamic laws. For
example, a fan blade produces lift when the chord is elevated from the direction of the relative wind as shown in Fig.3.

Fig.3. Nomenclature for an airfoil

45. Kiran Patil, Subham Kharche, Abhijit Mate, Satish Chaudhari, Dr. Ashwini Kumar, Prof. Kiran Londhe and Prof. Vipul R.
Kaushik,. A REVIEW OF OPTIMAL RADIAL BLOWER DESIGN FOR ELECTRONIC COOLING SYSTEM. Journal for
Advanced Research in Applied Sciences. Volume 4, Issue 5, Oct-2017 Pages: 41-47

The elevation angle is referred to as the angle of attack (AOA). The greatest airflow delivery from a fan occurs when the AOA is at a
minimum; but the pressure differential across the fan is zero. As the AOA is increased, the airflow delivery decreases and the pressure
differential increases. The airflow can decrease to nearly zero, but will also deliver the maximum pressure differential in this condition,
which is called the shut-off point. When an AOA is reached where the air will no longer flow smoothly and begins to separate from
the blades, an aerodynamic stall condition exists. Since a fan is a constant volume machine, it will move the same volumetric flow
rate of air irrespective of the air density. However, the mass flow rate does change as the density changes. This becomes important
when equipment is expected to operate at altitudes significantly greater than sea level. Therefore the volumetric flow rate required at
altitude will be greater than that required to achieve the same cooling as at sea level.

THE FAN CURVE

All of the aerodynamic aspects of a fan are exhibited in a fan curve such asis shown in Fig.4. The fan performance curve is one of the
few curves that are read from right to left, because you start with healthy aerodynamic flow and follow it through to aerodynamic stall.

Fig.4. Fan interaction

However, in contrast to an airplane wing, there is life after stalling in a fan. A stalled fan continues to deliver air, but at an increased
static pressure and a decreased volumetric flow rate, and also at the cost of an increase in noise. If noise is not a consideration, the fan
can be utilized in this condition. An energy viewpoint is helpful in understanding the fan performance curve. For example, at the shut-
off point, the fan is in the condition of the maximum potential energy. At free delivery, the fan is in the condition of the maximum
kinetic energy. Although neither of these extreme conditions is likely to occur in practice, they can be useful parameters in comparing
fans. The governing principle in fan selection is that any given fan can only deliver one flow at one pressure in a particular system. This
operating point is determined by the intersection of the fan static pressure curve and the system pressure curve. Fig. 4 illustrates the
operating points of both high and low resistance systems. It is best to select a fan that will give an operating point being toward the
high flow, low pressure end of the performance curve to maintain propeller efficiency and to avoid propeller stall. Each particular
electronic packaging system should be analyzed for possible reduction in the overall resistance to airflow. Other considerations, such as
available space and power, noise, reliability, and operating environment should also be brought to bear on fan choice.

NUMERICAL SIMULATIONS

Steady and unsteady RANS simulations have been performed in order to predict the flow within the blower. Steady-state numerical
simulations are more affordable (Marsan and Moreau, 2016). They allow to describe the whole operating range of the blower for the
900 RPM and 1000 RPM and to study the evolution of the main flow structures depending on the operating points. Un- steady
numerical simulations are far more time consuming, and give access to the temporal evolution of the flow. In particular, the
instantaneous wall pressure fields allow computing the acoustic radiation of the blower using an acoustic propagation code. Two
operating points at 900 RPM and 1000 RPM are calculated with this model. Various phenomena are possibly responsible for the
experimentally observed tonal noise, as for example the inlet flow distortion, the rotor-tongue interaction, and the interaction between
the rotating blades and the trapdoors.
46. Kiran Patil, Subham Kharche, Abhijit Mate, Satish Chaudhari, Dr. Ashwini Kumar, Prof. Kiran Londhe and Prof. Vipul R.
Kaushik,. A REVIEW OF OPTIMAL RADIAL BLOWER DESIGN FOR ELECTRONIC COOLING SYSTEM. Journal for
Advanced Research in Applied Sciences. Volume 4, Issue 5, Oct-2017 Pages: 41-47

The numerical results should provide some insight into the dominant source of the siren noise.

Fig.5. Sound pressure level at chimney outlet

Fig.6. View of the mesh domain

Numerical simulations have all been performed using the commercial CFD code ANSYS CFX R15.0. This code solves the three-
dimensional Navier-Stokes equations on an unstructured grid, using an implicit element-based finite-volume formulation, and a
pressure-based coupled algorithm solver. The flow is modeled as fully turbulent incompressible air. The effect of the turbulence on the
mean flow is modeled using the shear-stress transport (SST) k-w turbulence model. The incompressible model gives access to the
unsteady wall pressure fluctuations that are due to the aerodynamics, but does not take into account any propagation effect of the
acoustic waves. It then discards the influence of reflex ions and distortions on the wall pressure fluctuations. This assumption is
suitable for large wavelengths compared to the size of the surfaces, i.e. compact surfaces. Here, with a reference length of 1 meter, the
source can be considered as semi-compact for frequencies less than 2 kHz. The blade passing frequency being equal to 133 Hz, the
assumption of compactness is suitable for the first harmonics of the BPF. The unstructured mesh has been built using the software
Centaur 10.05. The immediate vicinity of the solid walls is meshed with prisms whereas the volume is meshed using tetrahedrons. This
ensures a good discretization of the boundary layers, the first cell width being set to 1mm. This value ensures a dimensionless wall
distance y+ below 10 over all solid surfaces, except in the vicinity of the volute tongue where it reaches its maximum being equal to 10.
Figure 6 shows the 3 domains used for the meshing. The inlet box domain counts 841 000 cells. The rotor domains include only one
blade passage and counts approximately 1.7 millions of cells. The volute domain counts 7.2 millions of cells. The mixing-plane
approach is used for the steady-state numerical simulations. It is based on a circumferential averaging of the flow at the rotor-stator
interfaces. This allows reducing the computational domain to one blade passage only in the rotor. This numerical approach is used in
order to obtain a Fig.6. View of the mesh domains. First mean flow field, which is afterwards given as initial flow field for the unsteady
numerical simulation. As concerns the unsteady numerical simulations, the mesh of the rotor domain is duplicated in order to
reconstitute the full wheel and the rotor-stator interfaces are now modeled using the sliding mesh approach. The total mesh counts
then approximately 17 millions of cells. Advance in time is performed using first-order backward Euler temporal discretization, and
with 40 time steps per blade passage.
 47. Kiran Patil, Subham Kharche, Abhijit Mate, Satish Chaudhari, Dr. Ashwini Kumar, Prof. Kiran Londhe and Prof. Vipul R.
Kaushik,. A REVIEW OF OPTIMAL RADIAL BLOWER DESIGN FOR ELECTRONIC COOLING SYSTEM. Journal for
Advanced Research in Applied Sciences. Volume 4, Issue 5, Oct-2017 Pages: 41-47

All solid surfaces are modeled as smooth walls using a no-slip boundary condition. Uniform total pressure and temperature are applied
at the inlet. No detailed experimental data are available and a 5 percent turbulence rate has been set at the inlet. Regarding the outlet, a
constant static pressure is applied.

DESIGN OF A RADIAL BLOWER

The blower geometry built from Icepack primitive objects such as solid, hollow, fluid blocks and fans. Blowers housing, inlet and
exhaust areas can be seen from this figure. There are two fans built into the blower model. The inlet fan (smaller of the two) is mainly
to induce pressure and part of the swirl that is actually induced by rotating backward impellers. A corrected blower curve, as will be
discussed in the next section, is assigned to this fan. Second fan (larger of the two) is merely used to enhance the swirl, therefore, do
not increase pressure across it. Special consideration is given to capture the swirl mainly because of interaction of multiple blowers in a
single tray.

CONCLUSIONS

On the basis of above descriptive discussions of following are the major conclusions:

1. A brief study about electronic cooling systems and there components have been studied.
2. Importance of radial blower along with heat sink and heat pipe has been shown in the literature.
3. The present study gives a precious insight into the acoustics of large scale radial blowers and suggests several acoustic treatments.
4. Despite the very large spacing between the rotor trailing edge and the volute, the interaction between the rotating blades and the
tongue has been identified as a major tonal noise generation mechanism, which is similar to the results obtained on centrifugal
blowers.
5. The front and back walls are also important acoustic sources, but the directivity of their radiation is unfavorable to the
propagation in the outlet duct.

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