Overview: This is the short introduction to COMSOL, which will be used to solve series of

homework problems this semester. Even though this tutorial should give you a sense of how
COMSOL works, students are encouraged to visit more thorough and in-depth document from a
link below.

http://www.ewp.rpi.edu/hartford/~collir5/MP/OTHER/Reference/HeatTransferModuleUsersGu
ide.pdf

Other examples could be found here. (You need to register to have access to models)

https://www.comsol.com/models/fluid

Many of problems you will encounter might have already been discussed in COMSOL forum.
Give it a look.

https://www.comsol.com/community/forums/

Problem
An array of electronic chips is arranged very densely on a board. The board received a constant heat flux
at its left side. The operation is at steady state and the board releases little heat to its left side and the
top/bottom ends. The heat flux from the chips is 5 W/cm2, the board is 30 cm long and 2 mm thickness
with a conductivity of 1 W/mK. An array of micro jets impinge on the right side surface of the board
giving an averaged heat transfer coefficient of 200 W/m2K. Please show the change of chip temperature
when i) thermal conductivity of the board changes

Five steps to construct the simulation.

1. Create geometry
2. Define material properties
3. Specify boundary condition
4. Meshing
5. Solving and Post-processing
Lets get started

1. Open the software from COMSOL icon on either desktop or the Startup menu

2. After open, you should see the COMSOL window as seen in a picture below.
3. Choose the model wizard

4. Select 2D space dimension

5. Choose laminar flow in conjugate heat transfer and click add

6. If done properly, you should see Heat transfer and Laminar flow in a box of Added physics
interfaces. Click study

7. Choose Stationary study, you should see it in the added study. Click Done.
8. You should see the COMSOL workspace. Please check if you have i) Heat transfer menu ii)
Laminar flow menu and iii) Study menu with stationary

9. Right-click on Definition and choose parameter

10. Define physical parameters. Below are parameters which will also be used in a subsequent
problem.

11. Right-click Geometry 1 and choose Rectangular

12. Define chips dimension

13. You should see that a chip is built.

14. You will be asked to simulate a condition when the force flow is existed in the next
question. However, this problem considers only the pure conduction. Therefore, the
Laminar flow as well as Multiphysics should be disabled.

15. Right-click at materials and select Blank material

16. Select only domain 1 in selection box. You will see that Value column is blank. You will need
to insert pre-defined parameter (done in step 10) for chips properties.
17. Right-click Heat Transfer and add Heat flux. Do it again to another Heat flux. Under
Heat Transfer, make sure you have Heat Flux 1 and Heat Flux 2 added.

18. Under Heat Transfer. Choose initial values. And specify Tini as the initial temperature. The
setting implies that the initial temperature in chip domain is 30 degC.
19. Under Heat Transfer. Choose heat flux. Select boundary 1. And specify flux in General
inward heat flux. This setting implies that the chip constantly generates heat flux of 5
W/cm2 at the bottom.

20. Under Heat flux 2, we will specify the convective heat flux by choosing the right-side
boundary of the chip, where the heat transfer coefficient and the external temperature are
replaced by pre-defined parameters.
21. As of now, we will only use automatically-generated mesh. Keep in mind that meshing plays
a very important role in numerical simulations. However, we wont cover that in detail for
this course. Students are encouraged to visit the link below for better understanding.

https://www.comsol.com/multiphysics/mesh-refinement
https://www.comsol.com/blogs/efficiently-mesh-your-model-geometry-with-meshing-
sequences/

22. Go to Study 1 and run the calculation by clicking Compute.

23. Once the calculation is completed, you will see the 2D plot for temperature.

24. The average temperature of a chip could be found by adding Surface average 1 under the
Derived Values
25. A homework asks you to evaluate the temperature profile when some parameters are
changed. Thus, its necessary that you need to run multiple iterations. However, COMSOL
provides parametric study option, which can ease a task. In this example, I will determine
the average temperature of the chip with various thermal conductivities.

26. After you run the calculation, you will see multiple results associated with different values
of a parameter.
27. If you find the average chip temperature with the approach in step 24. You should see
multiple average temperature associated with specific thermal conductivity.
28. You can also put results in a graph.