Design of air and liquid cooling systems for electronic components using concurrent simulation and experiment

The design of cooling systems for electronic equipment is getting more involved and challenging due to increase in demand for faster and more reliable electronic systems. Therefore, robust and more efficient design and optimization methodologies are required. Conventional approaches are based on sequential use of numerical simulation and experiment. Thus, they fail to use certain advantages of using both tools concurrently. The present study is aimed at combining simulation and experiment in a concurrent manner such that outputs of each approach drive the other to achieve better engineering design in a more efficient way. In this study, a relatively simple problem, involving heat transfer from multiple heat sources simulating electronic components and located in a horizontal channel, was investigated. Two experimental setups were fabricated for air and liquid cooling experiments to study the effects of different coolants. De-ionized water was used as the liquid coolant in one case and air in the other. The effects of separation distance and flow conditions on the heat transfer and on the fluid flow characteristics were investigated in detail for both coolants. Cooling capabilities of different cooling arrangements were compared and the results from simulations and experiments were combined to create response surfaces and to find the optimal values of the design parameters.