Computational fluid dynamics modeling of heat transfer in a LuxTurrim5G smart light pole
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Journal Title
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Volume Title
Insinööritieteiden korkeakoulu |
Master's thesis
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Authors
Date
2021-08-23
Department
Major/Subject
Mechanical Engineering
Mcode
Degree programme
Master's Programme in Mechanical Engineering (MEC)
Language
en
Pages
54
Series
Abstract
The present thesis is a part of the LuxTurrim5G project, a collaborative initiative of Business Finland and participating companies. The objective of the thesis is to simulate turbulent flow inside of a utility box with a flow rate of \SI{2}{m^3/min} to analyze the thermal behaviour of the system. The utility box houses several electronic components some of which produce heat and therefore need cooling for optimum performance. Two different flow directions were considered to evaluate the effectiveness of each of them. Four different temperature fields were used to account for the different ambient temperature conditions and solar radiation on the outer wall in two different locations on Earth, Helsinki and the Equator (in Africa). The analysis was carried out using the RANS (Reynolds Averaged Navier Stokes) simulations and LES (Large Eddy Simulations) was used to check for the turbulent effects in the domain. The time-averaged fields in the LES cases were found to be very similar to the flow fields in the RANS simulations. The only major difference was the maximum temperature being slightly lower in the LES cases owing to the transition effects from RANS to LES. The CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) simulations were carried out on the Finnish supercomputer and were run until a steady state was reached. The complex geometry was simplified to ease the meshing process to produce a fairly consistent mesh. Four different mesh sizes were used to prove grid independence and the large eddy simulations were initialized with the steady state RANS solutions. Several flow features like flow recirculation were observed because of the rectangular blocks in the domain and these regions were regions of high heat concentrations. The maximum temperature reached was at the Equatorial conditions due to high ambient temperatures and intense solar radiation. The highest local air temperatures in the domain were close to \SI{90}{^oC}. However, simplification of the geometry lead to the removal of heat removal locations for the heated blocks and also, some passive cooling effects were neglected. It was concluded, based on the temperature fields and the probability distribution function of temperature that the top-to-bottom flow removes heat better from the system all of the different surface temperatures used and therefore, the surface temperatures do not have a major impact on the heat removal rate of the system.Description
Supervisor
Vuorinen, VilleThesis advisor
Laitinen, AlpoLaurila, Erkki
Keywords
computational fluid dynamics, reynolds averaged navier stokes, large eddy simulations, thermal management, electronic cooling