Investigation of a piezoelectric fan cooling system with multiple magnetic fans

► An innovative multiple vibrating-fan cooling system has been developed by using PZT force and magnetic force. ► A PZT plate is capable of actuating five vibrating fans simultaneously ► The cooling system can be embedded into a heat sink in the application of electronic devices. ► The temperature of the heat sink dropped from 67°C to 50°C when the system is consuming 0.03W. Previous research has shown that the performance of a single piezoelectric (PZT) fan cooling system that is strongly affected by the operating frequency, fan amplitude, fan arrangement, and power consumption. Moreover, new dimensionless numbers, including Mp and Ri, have been defined to analyze the performance of the cooling system. In this study, an innovative multiple vibrating-fan cooling system has been developed by using PZT force and magnetic force. In this design, a PZT plate can be used to actuate five vibrating fans simultaneously. The performance of the system is demonstrated by the total amplitude of the system. The total amplitude of the single PZT fan system was 8mm while the total amplitude of the multiple vibrating-fan system was 31mm under the same power consumption. Furthermore, the multiple vibrating-fan system can be embedded into a heat sink directly. The temperature of the heat sink dropped from 67°C to 50°C when the system was operated under the condition of 36.4Hz, 50V, and λ=2mm. The result shows that the temperature drop reaches 17°C under a power consumption of 0.03W.