COMPUTATIONAL FLUID DYNAMIC ANALYSIS OF GROUND COMMUNICATION CABINET SYSTEM

Thermal design of a ground communication cabinet is taken up in this project with a view to keep the temperature below 1000 C. Execution of this task needs information about heat transfer coefficient in forced convection environment in order to compute the maximum temperature against a specified heat load. Major complexity associated with heat transfer coefficient is not being a constant value like thermal conductivity. In fact heat transfer coefficient is governed by many factors like shape, orientation of the flow surface, etc. However empirical correlations are available for cabinets having regular shapes. But all practical cabinets will have irregular shapes for which only alternative left is to estimate the heat transfer coefficient through Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) software. Once again to make use of CFD software the designer should procure the software which will be a costly affair and further he should attain expertise. To get rid of this troublesome situation an analytical method will be established to estimate the heat transfer coefficient and the same will be validated with commercial CFD software package. Further maximum temperature will be estimated using the so evolved heat transfer coefficient As a part of the design process selection of fan will also be accomplished. The outcome of this project would be an analytical method which any thermal designer can make use of as a hand calculator to quickly arrive at the cooling scheme without depending on CFD software.