CFD-Based Thermal Management Study of PCB Assembly to Assist Cooling Fan Selection
Plextek is a Cambridge based electronics design house, specialising in product and systems design for communications, automotive, aerospace, defence and medical applications. Wilde undertook a CFD-based thermal management study to evaluate layout options for a critical piece of test hardware.
Objectives
Evaluate subsystem package surface temperatures for a given layout and advise on suitability of cooling fan selection.
The Modelling Process
Geometry was imported to ANSYS Design Modeler for de-featuring and clean-up. ANSYS CFX was used to determine thermal and pressure-drop characteristics of a finned heat sink. The main analysis was undertaken with ANSYS ICEPAK.
Benefits
Determined layout constraints earlier in the design process thus reducing prototype iterations and development time.
