Numerical Simulation And Design Optimization Of A Desktop Computer Chassis

An ATX chassis is researched in this artical. The heat dissipation of the chassis is studied by experimental measurement and numerical simulation. On the basis of secondary development to Fluent software, the air cooling heat dissipation process of the chassis is simulated. And to find optimal configurations for chassis heat dissipation in a passive fashion, the heat dissipation performance of the chassis under circumstances of different locations of an additional fan and flow-inducing openings on the chassis cover is discussed.Thermocouples and data acquisition modules are used to measure the temperture of the main elements in the chassis during the computer runs stably under room temperture condition. And the heat dissipation process of the chassis is simulated to get the temperature and velocity flields in it. Contrast is made between the results of experimental measurement and numerical simulation. According to the analysis, the simulation result is close to the experiment value of the temperature, which proves that using Fluent software to simulate the air cooling heat dissipation process in the chassis is feasible. To find optimal configurations for chassis heat dissipation in a passive fashion without making further hardware changes on the current design, an additional fan and flow-inducing openings are arranged on different locations of the chassis cover. The heat dissipation of the elements in the chassis under these different optimizations is studied by numerical simulation and experiments. The results are analysed and compared. It is concluded that optimal configurations in terms of heat dissipation of elements in the chassis do exist with proper conditions of the fan and openings. For those important chip-based elements, their temperature can be reduced by arranging side flow-inducing openings and additional exhaust-fan. The temperature of HDD and DVD can be reduced temperature by arranging front flow-inducing openings and additional exhaust-fan. Arranging top flowing-inducing and additonal intake-fan can't improve the heat dissipation performance of the chassis, but exhaust-fan can reduce the temperture of the elements in the chassis.