The etymology of the phrase ‘red hot’ dates back to the 14th century describing the colour attained by metal as it is heated. When attributed to people it can euphemistically be used to describe passion and attractiveness. Any colourful picture output from a numerical thermal simulation of an electronics system will have red depicting hot and commonly blue to show … [Read more...]

“Authorities in the US have instructed Sony to conduct a recall of its Vaio laptops, after problems with overheating were reported.” started this article on the BBC’s web site. There is a saying, ” the news is never as good or as bad as it is first reported”. And so it is with this story. It’s not a product recall, as the story later goes on to explain, but what … [Read more...]

This final blog in this series focuses on what is sometimes the most ethereal of CFD modelling arts, where and how to define your peripheral boundary conditions. A fancy phrase but in reality no more than deciding where the interface is between what you model and what you don’t. Heat is contemptuous of such divisions, it will spread out from it’s source and keep on … [Read more...]

I’ve not posted for a while, which is rather remiss of me. I underestimated the response we would get to our Heatsink 201 webinar, which I gather was our most popular ever, and the number of questions that people would ask. I had around 120 questions, which after removing duplicates and those to do with logistics ended up at around 80, so it took a while to answer them all. … [Read more...]

Any simulation technology based on an approach of subdividing a 3D model into many tessellated control volumes (e.g. the finite volume method) will be affected by the shape and size of those ‘mesh cells’ or ‘grid’. How fine should the mesh be to resolve the physics of the model being simulated? Good question. I used to ask my art teacher how to draw … [Read more...]