Thermal interaction and chimney effects on turbulent natural convection characteristics of heat generating blocks mounted on a board in cabinet

Efforts are performed to investigate numerically the influence of thermal interaction between air streams inside and outside a cabinet, and chimney effects of air vents on the cooling performance of heat generating blocks mounted on a board in the cabinet. The computation domain covers the cabinet and the surrounding area, and the temperature and velocity fields of the cabinet and surrounding area are solved simultaneously. Results show that the difference in hot spot temperatures of blocks between the situations with and without consideration of thermal interaction can be up to 55%. In addition, when three vents are constructed on the cabinet wall, the hot spot temperature can be reduced about 64%.