Turbulent natural convection cooling of electronic components mounted on a vertical channel

Abstract The paper presents a numerical simulation of conjugate, turbulent natural-convection air cooling of three heated ceramic components, which are identical and mounted on a vertical adiabatic channel. A two-dimensional, conjugate heat transfer model and the standard k–ϵ turbulence model were used to obtain the dynamic and thermal fields. The finite-volume method has been used to solve the model equations throughout the entire physical domain (solid and fluid). After validation of the method with available measurements for a single source, it was applied to investigate the effects on cooling of spacing between the heated electronic components and of the removal of heat input in one of the components. The former modification led to better cooling while the latter can be partially advantageous only when the non-powered components are mounted between the powered ones: this reduces the temperature of the powered components situated downstream from the non-powered component.