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Thermal Management: The New Generation of CFD
December 31, 1969 |Estimated reading time: 4 minutes
By Meredith Courtemanche, managing editor
The image is ubiquitous from children's cartoons to TV commercials to literature: a frustrated robot shown with smoke coming out its "ears." What does this tell us? Complex electronics require thermal management. Overheated electronics assemblies are useless. Every new thermal management solution on the market shares a few common traits. Since all users want fast solutions, easy design-in, and the least-expensive thermal management plan, this usually means heat control must be included at the earliest possible interconnect. Major design companies released new thermal management solutions recently, prompting a look at the various technologies that can keep your robots happy, regardless of their workload.
Future FacilitiesFuture Facilities, a thermal management design company that began with data center design, released 6sigma ET as part of the next generation of its 6sigma DC suite. The software is designed to communicate from chip to environment, including package and PCB, chassis, and room. This maintains thermal integrity and design portability across the entire vertical chain of electronics integration, said Sherman Ikemoto of Future Facilities.
6sigma ET features intelligent and automated objects and gridding. It can handle common modern design elements, such as rotated and angled geometries. The software can import EDA elements in IDF and STL formats directly for mechanical MCAD data such as complex heatsinks or fan shrouds. Designers can also specify parts within the design environment. Imported files are analyzed and gridded automatically without simplification for more accurate thermal simulations. If information is missing, the software will implement intelligent defaults to maintain simulation integrity.
Designers also can use the software to analyze and compare various thermal management elements. Ikemoto demonstrated this, designing a simple scenario with a processor on a PCB, with a heatsink and fan system. With simple drop-in design changes, designers can compare different heatsink styles, with feedback on package temperature, airflow, system dimensions, and other information. Models can be saved and shared. The solver reportedly handles large and complex issues without significant lag time.
Components libraries include heat sinks, PCBs, sockets, chips, chassis, and other elements. Users can input various scenarios for the design, such as maximum-allowable temperature for a given chip. The visual "sandbox" lets designers view what's happening in the simulation, not simply a list of design measurements. The results are a balance of detail and time efficiency, maintaining engineering quality without slowing down a project, said Ikemoto. Typical and worse-case scenarios can be evaluated; underperforming legacy designs can be imported and re-evaluated. It also enables designers across the supply chain to collaborate on projects in the same design environment.
ANSYSANSYS Inc. shares Future Facilities' perspective on increased power densities prompting more focus on thermal management. "With today's high-performance electronic devices, there is a trend to reduce device size while increasing product functionality. This trend increases power densities in devices, which necessitates that thermal management become a design driver," said Dipankar Choudhury, VP of corporate product strategy and planning at ANSYS Inc.
The company released ANSYS Icepak software, a fluid dynamics technology product for electronics thermal management. The 12.0 release introduces new methods of PCB and package thermal analysis, enhanced technologies for meshing complex geometry, and new physical modeling capabilities. The design package reportedly suits engineers that are developing cell phones, computers and graphics cards.
ANSYS Icepak software is said to accurately simulate the dissipation of thermal energy in electronic devices at the component, board, or system level. Based on the ANSYS FLUENT CFD solver, the software has a streamlined user interface for rapid model creation. Integration of ANSYS Iceboard and ANSYS Icechip capabilities lets engineers analyze package, PCB, and system designs. Direct import of electronic CAD (ECAD) designs allows engineers to model all components of packages and PCBs, including traces, vias, solder balls, solder bumps, wire bonds, and die. A new PCB trace Joule heating modeling capability along with the import of DC power distribution profiles from Ansoft SIwave software enhances thermal simulation of PCBs. Other updates were made to the fan modeling capabilities; parallel processing; post-processing; and libraries, including heat sinks, thermo-electric coolers, materials, and enhanced macros. When used with SIwave and ANSYS Mechanical, Icepack suits electrical, thermal, and structural requirements of complex electronics design.
ANSYS Icepak 12.0 has two new meshing technologies: automatic multi-level meshing and Cartesian hex-dominant meshing. These handle complex geometries and improve accuracy, mesh smoothness, quality, curvature and proximity capturing, and speed. The meshing elements automatically generate conformal meshes that represent the true shape of components and the solution of fluid flow and all modes of heat transfer conduction, convection and radiation for steady-state and transient thermal flow simulations.
ANSYS also offers Ansoft electromagnetic, electromechanical, circuit and system behavior technologies.
Mentor Graphics Corporation, Mechanical Analysis DivisionWhen Mentor Graphics acquired Flomerics in 2008, the company gained enough thermal management design simulation technology to create the Mechanical Analysis Division. Chris Heard, TCS engineer at Amphenol, recently completed a case study using Mentor Graphics' FloTHERM computational fluid dynamics (CFD) software. Through increasingly detailed simulation environments, the chassis designer was able to optimize airflow, verify the design's feasibility from a thermal management perspective, and circumvent possible thermal problems as the design progressed. Check out the case study: Thermal Management Issues Resolved by Optimizing Airflow in Chassis. Mentor Graphics' consulting engineering manager John Wilson explains the CFD tools further in the upcoming July/August issue of SMT, in CFD Thermal Analysis for Improved Reflow. He states, "There is an urgent need for PCB design solutions that merge operator expertise on oven behavior with deep knowledge of the PCB's layout, particularly the copper content and component placement, and their effect on thermal properties."
Look for the thermal design article in the July/August issue, and stay tuned to next week's e-newsletter, which will feature an article on board-level thermal management from Paul A. Magill, Ph.D., VP of marketing and business development, Nextreme Thermal Solutions Inc.
Meredith Courtemanche, managing editor