Performance and flow characteristics of miniature EHD air blowers for thermal management applications

• Electrohydrodynamic (EHD) air blowers are receiving increasing attention as a thermal management cooling solution to overcome the restrictions of traditional rotary cooling systems used in small-scale consumer electronics. In this work, the performance and flow pattern characteristics of miniature EHD air blowers are evaluated for practical convective heat transfer applications, based on device size, operating voltage and power, and generated flow rate. For a range of blower heights up to 10 mm, two-dimensional (2D) and three-dimensional (3D) numerical models of a wire-to-plane EHD channel configuration are developed and validated against previous experimental data. Investigation of the influence of blower sidewalls, based on width parameter, on flow characteristics reveals that the 2D simulations for short and wide blower domains are valid to predict the generated flow rates effectively compared to that obtained by the means of 3D simulations. An optimized combined EHD blower is developed as a flow-controlled cooling system in thermal management applications, which minimizes the required operating voltages for specified flow rates. Comparisons against commercial rotary blowers demonstrate that the miniature EHD blowers are more competitive as cooling solutions for compact applications and extended heated surfaces based on transduction efficiency, blower size, flow production of uniform velocity profile, and power consumption.

Keyword

EHD flow characteristics

Electrohydrodynamic (EHD) air blowers

Microelectronics cooling

Pumping performance

Thermal management

Compressors

Cooling

Cooling systems

Electrohydrodynamics

Electronic cooling

Energy efficiency

Flow patterns

Heat convection

Heat transfer

Microelectronics

Temperature control

Thermal variables control

Thermoelectric equipment

Air blowers

Convective heat transfer

EHD flows

Electrohydrodynamic (EHD)

Micro electronics cooling

Thermal management applications

Three dimensional (3D) numerical models

Blowers

Publication and Content Type

ref (subject category)

art (subject category)