Determination of relative positions and phase angle of dual piezoelectric fans for maximum heat dissipation of fin surface

• A three-dimensional dual piezoelectric fans on the bounded plane is built.
• The optimal relative positions and phase angle of fans are determined with LMM.
• The dual piezoelectric fans operate best under in-phase operational conditions.
• Both fans should be positioned 0.95 mm below the center point of the fin plate.
• The relative errors between numerical and experimental fin temperatures are small.

A three-dimensional computational model for dual piezoelectric fans on the bounded plane has been built using the commercial code CFD-ACE+, and the Levenberg–Marquardt Method (LMM) was used to estimate the optimal relative positions and phase angle of fans for minimizing the average temperature of the fin surface. The dual piezoelectric fans are originally placed in seven different positions (cases 1–7), and the LMM is then utilized to estimate the optimal relative positions and phase angle for increasing the thermal performance of dual piezoelectric fans. The simulations of numerical computations show that for each of the seven original fan arrangements, the optimal relative positions and phase angle of the dual fan are achieved using a singular arrangement in which both fans are located 0.95 mm below the center line of the fin and the in-phase operational condition is used. Finally, the temperature distributions of the fin for the original designs of cases 1 and 2 and for the optimal design of case 1 are measured using a thermal camera and are compared with the numerical solutions. The results indicate that the relative errors between numerical and experimental average fin temperatures at 600 s for original case 1, original case 2 and optimal case 1 are 0.68%, 0.52% and 0.68%, respectively, thereby validating the estimation method used herein to determine the optimal relative positions and phase angle of dual piezoelectric fans.