Two different package styles, two very different thermal responses when a extruded plate fin heatsink is placed on each. At the very least a FloTHERM simulation can be used to observe the thermal behaviour of…read more
Why Not Just Shove a Heatsink on Top of it? Part 1
May 13th, 2013
A common enough question. Heatsinks are often perceived to be the magic answer to all electronics cooling challenges. They should be called ‘area extenders’ as heat does not just disappear into them. Heat spreads throughout…read more
Experiment vs. Simulation, Part 5: Detailed IC Package Model Calibration Methodology
April 19th, 2013
In the royal family of thermal IC package modelling types, a detailed model is King. All critical 3D geometry is modelled explicitly, no abstraction into a thermal resistor equivalent model, no hiding all the proprietary…read more
Experiment vs. Simulation, Part 4: Compact Thermal Models
April 8th, 2013
Electronics cooling simulation was born out of the world of CFD, rather fully conjugate heat transfer simulation where convective, radiative and conductive affects are considered concurrently. Back in the day much talk was had about…read more
CFD – Colourful Friday Distractions
April 8th, 2013
By way of an apology for the more verbose blogs I’ve been issuing recently I’d like to present you with a blog that serves no other purpose than to show a pretty picture. CFD as…read more
Experiment vs. Simulation, Part 3: JESD51-14
February 22nd, 2013
The JESD51-14 standard was published in November 2010, prepared by the JEDEC JC-15 Committee on Thermal Characterization. It outlines a new process to measure what is the most common IC package thermal metric, Theta_jc. This…read more
Experiment vs. Simulation, Part 1: Them and Us.
January 18th, 2013
Before you sell it, or commission it, you want to be sure that it works. Monies have been spent on getting things this far, some of it on you via your overhead and your expansive…read more
A Little Goes A Long Way (But A Lot Doesn’t Go Much Further)
May 3rd, 2012
It has been almost 3 years since I started this blog and I hope you’ve found it as interesting as I have cathartic. Although I’m not as yet bereft of topic ideas, I thought this…read more
Simulation Software So Simple Even Teenagers Can Use It
April 4th, 2012
The UK government has a policy for all year 10 or year 11 students to undertake a week’s work experience. Last week we welcomed a 15 year old student to the Mentor office where the…read more
Bottlenecks and Interface Materials; Part 3 – Relieving Thermal Bottlenecks Reduce Temperatures
February 10th, 2012
As with all good inventions, you quickly wonder how on earth you could have done without them before. Relieving thermal bottlenecks reduce temperatures; it’s so blindingly obvious. Now that we have the ability to visualise…read more
Bottlenecks and Interface Materials; Part 2 – When TIMs Go Bad
January 30th, 2012
‘Bits stuck onto other bits’, a succinct definition of an electronic product, if not a product that contains electronics. Soldering is the method of choice for getting the components to attach to the pcb, the…read more
Bridging the Simulation Supply Chain; NXP Semiconductors, a Case in Point
January 22nd, 2012
By far and away the most common enquiry by someone using FloTHERM, especially at the start of their adoption, is “How do I model my components?”. This is hardly surprising as the mainstay of electronics…read more
Bottlenecks and Interface Materials; Part 1 – Great Thermal Bedfellows
January 18th, 2012
Probably due to the beer fridge, I now seem to be becoming the repository of broken electronic products with an expectation that the cause of their demise can be identified, retrospectively, using thermal simulation. This…read more
Emails, more Emails and Jeff Bridges
January 9th, 2012
It’s estimated that, from a figure of 0.4% in 1995, now about 30% of the world’s population are ‘internet users’. Not sure exactly what being a ‘user’ entails; looking at a web page? clicking a…read more
Recent Posts
- Thermal Spreading and More Using Open-Source FEA Software
- Two-Phase Flow Control of On-Chip Two-Phase Cooling Systems Developed for Blade Servers of Data Centers
- Thermal Facts and Fairy Tales: A System Perspective for Electronics Cooling
- Electronic Performance Impact of Elevated Humidity Environments — Implications for Free Air Cooling of Data Centers
- Epoxy Meets UL94V-0 Specifications
- Why Not Just Shove a Heatsink on Top of it? Part 2: Heat Flow Budgets
- New PWM Version of Fan Released
- Revisions for CPU Coolers for Intel Xeon
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