Numerical investigations of using carbon foam/PCM/Nano carbon tubes composites in thermal management of electronic equipment

A numerical investigation of predicting thermal characteristics of electronic equipment using carbon foam matrix saturated with phase change material (PCM) and Nano carbon tubes as thermal management modules is presented. To study the effect of insertion of RT65 and Nano carbon tubes in carbon foam matrices of different porosities, three different modules; namely Pure CF-20, CF20 + RT65, and CF-20 + RT65/Nano carbon modules are numerically tested at different values of carbon foam porosities. Mathematical model is obtained using volume averaging technique based on single-domain energy equation and a control volume based numerical scheme. Interfacial effects influencing heat transfer process at enclosure wall, module surface and different interfacial surfaces within the composite have been addressed. Governing equations have been solved using a CFD code (Thetis, http://thetis.enscbp.fr). Mathematical model is validated by comparing its prediction with previous experimental measurements for pure CF-20 foam and CF-20 + RT65 composite modules. The model is used to predict thermal characteristics of CF-20 + RT65/Nano carbon tubes composite as a thermal management modules. Results reveal that insertion of RT65/MWCNTs in CF-20 leads to a 11.5% reduction in the module surface temperature for carbon foam porosities less than 75%. The reduction decrease to 7.8% for a porosity of 88%. Numerical results of transient and steady state temperature histories at different depths within the module are compared with previous experimental data and fair agreement is obtained. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.