Case Study: Nokia Bell Labs achieves validated 3D airflow modeling for quiet, low‑power piezoelectric cooling fans with COMSOL Multiphysics

Meeting High-Speed Communications Energy Demands Through Simulation

Nokia Bell Labs sought to characterize airflow around an oscillating piezoelectric fan blade to develop a quiet, reliable, low-power cooling solution for increasingly compact electronics. The team needed fast, accurate 3D fluid-structure interaction modeling to capture vortices and near‑blade flow details that phase‑locked PIV experiments alone could not fully resolve, so they turned to Comsol and its COMSOL Multiphysics software.

Using Comsol, engineers performed 3D bidirectional FSI simulations with the arbitrary Lagrangian–Eulerian method, modeling shear forces and fluid pressure to compute vorticity and velocity fields around the oscillating blade. The simulations—validated against phase‑locked PIV data—provided higher-resolution insight than experiments, became a benchmark for future designs, and enabled faster geometry optimization and virtual design iterations to improve cooling performance and guide multi‑blade and related applications.

Nokia Bell Labs

Domhnaill Hernon

Research Activity Lead