Study on the natural air cooling design of electronic equipment casings: Effects of the height and size of outlet vent on the flow resistance

This paper describes the effects of the outlet vent size and the distance between the outlet vent location and the power heater position on the flow resistance in natural-air-cooled electronic equipment casings. An experiment was carried out using a simple model casing simulated for the practical natural-air-cooled casing which is composed of 4 side walls, a top plate and bottom plate which has an inlet opening. A power heater served as a power dissipation unit was placed at its open bottom. An outlet opening was set on one of the side walls. The opening area, the height of the outlet and the heater location were varied. The experimental results were analyzed using the flow resistance coefficient K which was related to the distance between the outlet vent and the power heater position and the heat removal from the outlet vent, and K values were plotted against a pair of Reynolds numbers Re and the outlet vent porosity b which is defined as the ratio of outlet vent open area to the top surface area of the casing.