Thermal Facts and Fairytales by Ross Wilcoxon Long time readers of Electronics Cooling will undoubtedly recall one of our former editors: Clemens Lasance. One of Clemens’ many contributions to the magazine was the creation of the original “Thermal Facts and Fairy Tales” column, which provided a forum for him to discuss a variety of issues related to the use and misuse of … [Read more...]
Avionics Thermal Management of Airborne Electronic Equipment, 50 Years Later
BACKGROUND In a proposal submitted to the Air Force in November of 1968, Collins Radio Company described ways to improve the electronic industry’s understanding of thermal management and predictive techniques [1]. This article briefly describes that proposal and discusses what aspects of electronics cooling have changed over the past five decades and what things have … [Read more...]
Reliability of Nano-sintered Silver Die Attach Materials
Coauthored by: Ross Wilcoxon, Mark Dimke, Chenggang Xie Rockwell Collins INTRODUCTION Die attach can play a significant role in the package level thermal resistance of wire bonded devices. Die with moderate heat flux can often be attached to the carrier substrate with organic, Silver Filled Die Attach (SFDA) materials that require relatively benign processing requirements … [Read more...]
Spreadsheet Based Thermal Resistance Analysis Part 2: Generating the Thermal Resistance Matrix
The first article in this series on spreadsheet based thermal resistance network analysis [1] described a procedure for using Microsoft Excel to solve a thermal resistance network by applying matrix analysis. That article assumed that the values of the thermal resistances between nodes were both known and fixed. This article presents methods for simplifying the process of … [Read more...]
calculation corner: a spreadsheet based matrix solution for a thermal resistance network: part 1
Ross Wilcoxon Rockwell Collins Cedar Rapids, Iowa A thermal resistance network analysis begins by defining discrete points within a system, known as nodes, and the thermal resistance between each set of nodes. Boundary conditions for external heat inputs and reference temperature(s) are applied to the appropriate nodes. Equations to relate nodal temperatures can be generated … [Read more...]
