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

Abstract

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.

A Review on Electrohydrodynamic (EHD) Pump

“…Author Problem type Software Jewell et al [26] Flow analysis COMSOL Multiphysics Fylladitakis et al [27] EHD pumps design FEMM Ongkodjojo et al [28] Thermal management COMSOL Multiphysics Chirkov et al [29] Flow analysis COMSOL Multiphysics Luo et al [30] Flow analysis -Yang et al [31] Flow analysis COMSOL Multiphysics Kuwajima et al [32] EHD pumps design COMSOL Multiphysics Sato et al [33] EHD pumps design COMSOL Multiphysics Ramadhan et al [34] Thermal management COMSOL Multiphysics Adamiak [35] Flow analysis COMSOL Multiphysics and ANSYS O'Connor and Seyed-Yagoobi [36] Flow analysis COMSOL Multiphysics Nourdanesh et al [37] Flow analysis COMSOL Multiphysics 2020, 2021 Mao et al [38,39] Flow analysis COMSOL Multiphysics Talmor and Seyed-Yagoobi [40] Flow analysis COMSOL Multiphysics Wang et al [41] Flow analysis -(GPU based computation) Monayem [42] Flow analysis ANSYS/FLUENT Selvakumar et al [43] Thermal management OpenFOAM Mazumder et al…”

Design and Experimental Evaluation of Innovative Wire-to-Plane Fins’ Configuration for Atmosphere Corona-Discharge Cooling Devices

“…Its goal was to evaluate the electrohydrodynamic fluid for its application to create EHD blowers which could substitute traditional mechanical fans. Kalman et al [28], Rashkovan et al [29] and Ramadhan et al [30,31] focused on optimizing the wire-plane configuration to be incorporated in an EHD blower with the aim of refrigerating electronic components and enhancing their efficiency. A mathematical and computational 2D and 3D model of this electrode configuration was developed under different conditions of electrode gap and applied voltage in order to determine an optimal design for use in heat transfer.…”