In Situ Optimization of Blower Blade Geometry of an Active Heat Sink in a Laptop

Within the tight space of a compact enclosure like a laptop, the performance of the active heat sink can be affected by its location, dimensions, blade design, and attached fins layout. These design parameters will affect the heat sink performance in terms of the amount of air it is able to deliver, and hence the amount of cooling it provides, as well as the acoustics energy level it is emitting while doing so. The objective of the current work is to optimize the design of the blower blades of an active heat sink under installed conditions in a laptop, in-situ, using 3D computational fluid dynamics (CFD) coupled with arbitrary shape deformation technology (ARD). The objective function is to maximize the amount of airflow while maintaining the broadband noise level emitted by the blower under a certain baseline value. A double digit improvement in airflow rate is expected to be reached while satisfying the acoustical constraints and having a constant fan rpm.