Multi-scale thermal modeling methodology for electronics cabinets

Electronic systems are characterized by large variations in length scales of interest, ranging from six to eleven decades, coupled modes of thermal transport, and multiple materials with large variations in thermo-physical properties. A multi-scale thermal modeling methodology based on proper orthogonal decomposition (POD) for electronic cabinets is developed. Simulation results for a typical server electronic cabinet using thermoelectric cooling are presented. A multilayer compact model for thermoelectric module is developed and a reduced order model for the enclosure and its associated plenum part is constructed using POD with flux matching technique. The compact model for the entire cabinet can be constructed directly by combining the compact model for each enclosure and its associated plenum part. A reduced order model for the enclosure and the entire cabinet based on this methodology is realized. An order of magnitude of 10 could be reduced for the DOF of system with an accuracy of more than 90%. This methodology can be directly extended to large-scale problems at the data center level for evaluation of advanced cooling approach.