We’re holding another webinar today, November 3rd, at 2PM EST “Tips, Tricks and Techniques for the Best Use of CFD for Heat Sink and System Modeling” In our webinar we’ll cover what we do at ATS in our use of CFD as part of our overall thermal analysis work. We think you’ll learn some of what we do so you can apply it to your own work.
You can register at no cost to you at this link: https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/738227666
One of the basic concepts of electronics cooling is effective transfer of heat from semiconductor devices to the ambient using heat sinks or other cooling technologies. The effectiveness of this approach depends on a systems total thermal resistance, which is composed of discrete thermal resistances on the path of heat from the source to the ambient. One of these resistances is spreading resistance.
Spreading resistance occurs whenever a small heat source comes in contact with the base of a larger heat sink. The heat does not distribute uniformly through the heat sink base, and consequently does not transfer efficiently to the fins for convective cooling. Figure 1 shows a CFdesign® simulation solution for such an occurrence. The spreading resistance phenomenon is shown by how the heat travels through the center of a heat sink base causing a large temperature gradient between the center and edges of the heat sink.
Figure 1: CFdesign solution showing temperature distribution
at the base of a heat sink
Spreading resistance is an increasingly important issue in thermal management as microelectronic packages become more powerful and compact and larger heat sinks are required to cool these devices. In high heat flux applications, spreading resistance can comprise 60 to 70% of the total thermal resistance.
A good estimate of spreading resistance is required to manage heat effectively using conventional air-cooled heat sinks. There have been a number of theoretical and experimental studies to estimate spreading resistance. Two of the most notable methods belong to Yovanovich et al. [1] and to Gordon N. Ellison [2].
While these extensive studies cover all aspects of spreading resistance, they involve cumbersome infinite series and complicated coefficient terms. (click the link to read the rest of our article here on our electronics cooling blog)
Posted in CFD, Thermal Analysis, thermal management, Thermal Science
Tagged CFD, thermal management, thermal research, thermal resistance
As part of our webinar today, we’ll be talking about some best practices we use at ATS when we perform CFD. We thought we’d share the list here with our readers and followers:
We’ll be Live Tweeting our webinar “CFD Tips and Tricks” today. The hashtag is #ats_cfd
If you haven’t signed up yet, here’s the link: https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/300959811
Posted in CFD, Thermal Analysis, thermal management
Just a reminder to followers of our electronics cooling blog that we’ll be having a free webinar on Thursday, June 23, 2PM EST on the “Tips, Tricks and Techniques for the Best Use of CFD for Heat Sink and System Modeling”.
Our CFD webinar this month is sponsored by Future Facilities. Passionate about data center simulation Future Facilities is a privately-owned company formed in 2004 with a simple mission: to ensure every datacenter can be a model datacenter. One where risk is mitigated and energy efficiency maximized while both capital and operational costs are reduced to the absolute minimum.
Future Facilities’ senior team boasts several acknowledged experts in the design and application of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) software for the datacenter industry. And in June 2006, after two and a half years of painstaking R&D, they have launched 6SigmaDC a suite of integrated software products that tackles head-on the challenges of datacenter lifecycle engineering through the Virtual Facility (VF).
Future Facilities has offices based in the heart of London, just a stone throw from the Houses of Parliament. They also have offices in San Jose,United States, and Tokyo, Japan.
See this video for a preview of what we’ll cover in our CFD webinar as well as some best practices we use at ATS:
We hold at least one webinar a month here at ATS. They are always chock full of solid thermal engineering information. And by that I don’t mean just some fancy slides with examples. No. We talk about the basic calculations involved in the science (some would call “black art”) of thermal management. We talk about how to “do” thermal management.
And it’s not always about “a bigger fan”.
And one of the most helpful tools we have in our arsenal is Computational Fluid Dynamics, or CFD for short. We do alot of CFD. Its not the only analysis we do, but, it forms an important part of our design cycle and it should yours as well. Whether you are developing a thermal management solution centered around a heat sink, heat pipe, air flow, what have you, CFD can be a helpful part of the cycle. As our founder and CEO, Kaveh Azar, once noted:
“When you use CFD properly, you have an upper hand on achieving thermal management solutions faster, cheaper and more effectively,” says Dr. Azar. You spend less time on trial and error in the lab, assembling and testing prototypes and sample parts. The more you know about CFD programs, the better you can simulate the important elements and avoid wasting time and memory where it’s not needed.
I’d like to invite you to our next webinar, being held June 23rd, 2PM EST, entitled, “Tips and Techniques for Best Use of CFD for Heat Sinks and Systems Modeling” We’ll be covering some great stuff in this webinar around how we use CFD in our thermal engineering and how you can apply it to your work as well. To register, and it is free, just click over to this link to sign up: https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/300959811
To get a quick overview of our CFD webinar, as well as hearing some of what we consider best practice for using CFD, watch this 2 minute screencast: