Design Considerations for Thermal Management of Electronics Enclosures

This study focuses on the design and optimization of an electronics enclosure intended for operation in an outdoor commercial heating, ventilation, and air conditioning, HVAC, application. In particular the design was optimized for a high ambient environment without the aid of forced air cooling. As electronically controlled motor drive systems are increasing in use, designs need to operate in new challenging environments, reach higher power density, and enable higher levels of system integration. Computational fluid dynamics, CFD, was used for design, analysis, and optimization and correlated with test data. A design of experiments, DOE, was used to evaluate the sensitivity of the final design to the operating environment. A constrained optimization was performed to determine the optimal fin spacing, height, angle, and thickness of the enclosure geometry for thermal dissipation of the heat from the power electronics. Various fin topologies were also analyzed to evaluate the impact of increased surface area and enhanced thermal mixing effects. After a thorough review of the design space, general design recommendations are made and an optimized design reviewed.