Thermal Management: An Essential Part of Electronic Design Process

Posted by Thermal DS on August 21st, 2019

In the past, thermal design has mostly been left till the end of the engineer’s design checklist. There are many reasons why engineers do that. Part of it is lack of in-house expertise. And part of it is not knowing the impact this part of electronic design can have on systems. For many systems, thermal management has significant effect on reliability, performance, and usage. At times, these can be very important differentiators in the final product design and product adoption. 

Thermal management of electronics starts with an accurate accounting of all power consuming components in your system. While doing this, it is important to that we know not only the absolute magnitude of power in our components, but also the power density. The ability of a system to reject heat and remain cool depends in large part on heat or power density. Because concentrated power usually translates into higher localized temperature, and hence into greater chance of failure and/or malfunction. 

The next critical step in thermal management design involves the accuracy of the system model. The system thermal model must represent the real system accurately, at least thermally. And the accuracy depends on the fidelity of the physical model as well as its thermal properties (such as thermal conductivities, densities and specific heat of various components within the model). To get accurate results, the thermal model must accurately capture these two aspects of the actual system. 

The other significant part of thermal modelling is the model environment. What this means is selecting the extent of the domain being analysed as well as specifying the boundary conditions. The thermal model must take into account the effect of the environment under which the actual system is supposed to work under. The environment is normally selected such that it reflects the worst possible thermal conditions. 

The benefits of thermal modelling are many. Through thermal modelling, the thermal engineer can again key insights into how the system will perform under different conditions quickly and cost-effectively. When done right, it saves the thermal engineer considerable time and money in reaching the right thermal solution. 

Thermal Modelling is one of the specialities of Thermal Design Solutions. We have extensive experience modelling great many systems. Whether it is steady-state or transient, regular or irregular geometries, we can build an accurate representation of your system and produce results for various scenarios. Thermalds.com can assist you with your thermal analysis needs quickly and effectively. Using state-of-the-art simulation tools, Thermalds can help you identify key metrics for your system. If you have any questions or want to learn more about our thermal management services, please shoot us email to info@thermalds.com.