Thermal Modeling of Air Cooled Outdoor Digital Displays

The thermal design process for many electronic products often minimizes the use of computational fluid dynamics and heat transfer (CFD/HT) software in favor of quick prototyping and testing to determine the thermal characteristics of the product. For large-scale products with many thermal challenges, such a strategy is impractical due to the high cost of prototyping cycles, time constraints, and the inevitable iterations involved. In such cases, thorough CFD/HT models developed early in the design process are very valuable for driving the product design. Based on this idea, the study examines thermal management and performance of a 55" outdoor digital display using CFD/HT software. Simulation results are obtained in the range of environmental temperature/irradiance values that can be experimentally obtained. The experimental data and simulations are compared to see if they are in a good agreement. The simulations are then used to make predictions for performance under harsh environments. The study examines variation in results between two different software, mesh element sizes, and meshing techniques. It is shown that CFD/HT software can be used as a means of making conservative design choices.