Overview

Natural convection plays a critical role in the thermal management of electronic and semiconductor devices, especially when no external cooling fan or pump is used.

In this tutorial, we demonstrate how to perform a Natural Convection Thermal Flow Analysis using MIDAS NFX CFD to predict airflow driven by buoyancy and evaluate the temperature distribution of a semiconductor chip and heat sink.

You will learn the complete simulation workflow, from model preparation to post-processing of temperature and airflow results.

What you will learn in this tutorial

• What Natural Convection is and how it differs from Forced Convection
• Creating fluid and solid domains for conjugate heat transfer analysis
• Assigning material properties for air, aluminum, PCB, and semiconductor components
• Setting up gravity and buoyancy using the ideal gas model
• Applying heat generation and thermal boundary conditions
• Generating high-quality meshes for thermal flow analysis
• Evaluating temperature distribution and airflow patterns
• Interpreting velocity vectors, streamlines, and thermal contours

Natural convection analysis is widely used in the design of electronic equipment, semiconductor devices, power electronics, communication systems, and passive cooling solutions where thermal performance is critical.

This tutorial is ideal for engineers, thermal designers, and students who want to learn electronics cooling and conjugate heat transfer simulation using MIDAS NFX CFD.