Thermal modeling of electronic components for thermal simulation of electronic equipment

Thermal flow simulation based on computational fluid dynamics (CFD) is applied to the thermal design of electronic equipment. This paper discusses the applicability of the multiple reference frame (MRF) approach, which is a new method for modeling an axial cooling fan, to the thermal flow simulation of electronic equipment. In this study, we performed flow visualization of the exhaust air flow pattern of the fan plane and then we compared the flow visualization results with the MRF fan model simulation results. Finally, comparing the P-Q characteristic which obtained by MRF fan model simulation with measured P-Q characteristic was conducted to validate the applicability of the MRF approach to the thermal flow simulation of electronic equipment.