Tag Archives: thermal calculations

ATS Offers Arrow Customers a Half-Day of Free Access to its Thermal Characterization Lab

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As part of the new distribution agreement between Arrow Electronics and Advanced Thermal Solutions, Inc., ATS is offering a half-day of free, no-obligation use of its unique Thermal Characterization Laboratory to Arrow customers. The Thermal Characterization Lab, located at ATS headquarters in Norwood, MA, allows engineers to perform thermal testing on heat sinks, fans and fan trays, PCBs, blades, enclosures, or complete systems. Experienced engineers, board and system designers can perform the tests themselves, or consult with an ATS thermal engineer at no cost during their 4 hours of laboratory time.

ATS’ Thermal Characterization Lab features a full range of research-quality instruments, including open and closed loop wind tunnels, for ambient and elevated temperature testing, all with PC-driven controls and automated data collection. The lab is also outfitted with a full array of the company’s sensor systems and thermocouples, which can be used to characterize electronic products under variable airflow and temperature conditions.

Liquid Crystal Thermography

In addition, the lab also features a JEDEC approved component thermal testing facility for conducting multitude of device level testing per JEDEC standards. The facility also provides a complete liquid crystal and IR thermography systems for non-invasive temperature mapping to 0.1oC with one micron-level spatial resolution; and a liquid cooling facility for complete testing and characterization of cold-plates, cooling effect and proof of concept testing.

 

“Most of today’s electronics have thermal situations that can turn into big problems if left alone. The easiest, lowest cost way to manage this is to conduct an accurate thermal characterization of the problem at hand,” said Kaveh Azar, Ph.D., President and CEO of Advanced Thermal Solutions, Inc. “If you have the right facility and associated know-how, you can often complete your test in a half-day, then you can readily assess what is the best thermal solution for your application. For engineers short on time and resources, we believe this free use of ATS’ Thermal Characterization Lab could be very helpful.”

Download the Brochure

To contact ATS for more information on this opportunity, please call 781-769-2800, email ats-hq@qats.com or visit www.qats.com.

How to Calculate Heat Loads for Liquid Cooling Systems

A series of calculations can be used to find the thermal loads in common liquid cooling systems. Calculations of this nature are needed to predict the performance of liquid cooling systems, which are effective but complex thermal management solutions. Several equations must be calculated to fully understand the behavior of a liquid cooled system, and ATS is providing these to engineers via personal instruction and in a paper available free from the company’s website, Qats.com.

IIn the paper, which appears in the company’s e-magazine, ATS considers a liquid cooling system as a closed loop system with three major components: cold plate, heat exchanger and pump. The cold plate is typically made from aluminum or copper, and is attached to the device being cooled. The plate usually has internal fins which transfer heat to the coolant flowing through them. This fluid moves from the cold plate to a heat exchanger where its heat is transferred to the ambient air via forced convection. The final part of the cooling loop is the pump, which drives the fluid through the loop.

A series of equations is provided to predict the final temperature of the device being cooled. The first of these equates the surface temperature of this device with the product of the power dissipated by the device times the thermal resistance of the cold plate (and its thermal interface material), added to the temperature of the water entering the cold plate.

The sequence of calculations factors in specifications from the cold plate, heat exchanger and pump. The result is a solution for the device temperature as a function of cold plate resistance. In the example cited by ATS, a cold plate thermal resistance of less than 18 degrees C/W is required to cool an Intel Xeon 5492 processor in a 25C temperature environment.

Liquid cooling is an important and expanding practice in the electronics industry. It is important to understand the impact on performance of all three major parts of liquid cooling loops (cold plate, heat exchanger and pump) to ensure an acceptable level of performance at the lowest cost.

Instructions for calculating load for liquid cooling systems are available on Qats.com in the pages of Qpedia, the thermal management emagazine from ATS. More information is also available by calling 1-781-949-2522.