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On-line airflow and pressure drop tools are free to cooling fan specifiers

Aimed at design engineers with responsibility for specifying fans for both industrial and consumer electronic applications, cooling specialist Papst has added new, very usable fan specifying tools to its web site.

Complimenting the existing Pressure and Airflow Unit Converter tools, the new Airflow and Pressure Drop Calculators help engineers and designers specify Papst cooling fans whilst simultaneously increasing the functionality available to registered users on the Papst plc web site.

The Airflow and Pressure Drop calculator is used as a benchmark instrument internally by Papst's own engineers when faced with selecting the correct cooling fan(s) for a given set of system characteristics. The objective of this tool is to obtain an initial estimate of what airflow a fan needs to produce, and to deduce what back pressure the fan must overcome to eradicate excessive heat from a system.

The tool is divided into two sections; the first contains a field for entering the overall power rating of a system (watts) and a field for Delta-T. The latter being the difference in temperature between the ambient air outside the system and the maximum permissible operating temperature within the system. After entering the values in the two fields, the user simply clicks on 'calculate'. Two figures (M3/sec and CFM) then appear that represent the airflow required to eradicate the level of waste heat.

To establish what back pressure the fan needs to overcome to deliver the required flow rate, the user then enters details of the relevant aperture size. By clicking on 'calculate' the result is displayed as a value in metres2 and is the total available open area for air to travel through. The very last data field displays the pressure loss the fan needs to overcome to deliver the required airflow.

These values can then be used to help determine the correct fan or fans needed to cool an application by matching up the pressure and airflow results obtained to the fan performance curves available under the data sheet section of Papst's website.

Existing users who have already registered on Papst's web site will be able to access the new tool via login in the usual manner by entering their unique user name and password. New users must first register to access this facility via Papst's home page - www.papstplc.com.