Numerical Modelling and Simulation of Plated Blowers for Cooling of Mobile Computing platforms

Abstract

In this paper, a novel design of centrifugal blower called Plated Blowers (PB) is proposed for cooling of laptop computers where the conventional rotor blade is replaced by a new design comprising of a sheet metal rotor with punched holes and residual hanging chads. A numerical study was conducted on these designs to determine the flow rates under operational speed of 6000 rpm. The results showed that the PB designs can outperform the traditional blade fan design as well as the Volumetric Resistance Blower (VRB) [1] in terms of air flow rate at iso-rpm conditions. Similar to VRB which has a porous rotor, the PBs are also expected to offer significant acoustic advantage over bladed fans (claim to be validated through tests), which can result in a boost in overall platform power in these mobile computing systems.