A Study on the Thermo-Fluidic Behavior of High-Wattage Power Supply

• Main Authors: Chia-Hui Chen, 陳家慧
• Other Authors: Chih-Tung Teng
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2009
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/39996182794034472593

碩士 === 中原大學 === 機械工程研究所 === 97 === Abstract The purpose of this study was to investigate – by experimental and computer simulation methodologies – the behavior of the heat-dissipating performance for the switching power supply (SPS) with a power of 1000 W. The SPS module used has a voltage of 112.9 V, a current of 11.8 A, an overall input power of 1328.8 W, and an overall output power of 1000 W, leading to an efficiency of 75.24% for the power supply module. This study intended to use the experimental data to verify the correctness of the numerical simulations and to evaluate the temperatures of the heat-dissipating components inside the power supply module. This study used the Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) methodology – the ICEPAK software package – to perform numerical simulations. Comparison between simulated results with those obtained from experiments indicated that the maximum temperature difference between the two sets of results is 5.7℃, or 6.93% using the experimental data as the reference for comparisons, reflecting reasonable good results obtained from the numerical simulations. Subsequently, numerical simulations were done to study the temperature and flow fields of the heat-dissipating components inside the power supply module, with the two key factors – the built-in aluminum extrusion-type heat sink and the forced-convection flow – being analyzed. By improved design of the heat sink together with its convective flow field, a reduction of temperature of 8.7℃ (or a 9.6% reduction of its temperature difference when comparing the results obtained before and after the redesign) with an overall average temperature reduction of 3.2℃ (or 3.8% on a percentage basis). Thus, enhancement of the thermal performance was achieved by the redesign of the heat sink together with its flow field. It is expected that by this kind of redesign, the thermal performance of the heat-dissipating module can reach its standard specification efficiency of 80%.