thermal simulation application in automotive electronic thermal design
Nowadays, the electronic functions in cars are increasing, and will soon exceed the value provided by mechanical functions. Electronic functions are also becoming the main competitive elements of models. The constraints of on-time delivery of models are no longer mechanical design, but electronics and software. Therefore, we should not only design these electronic components quickly, but also make them have high performance, quality and meet the reliability standard.
The main heat source of electronic equipment is its semiconductor chip (IC). These chips are very sensitive to temperature, which makes the thermal design a challenge. Overheating will cause the chip to fail prematurely. With the increase of functions, the related heat dissipation problems are becoming more and more prominent, which has become a potential restrictive factor in the development of electronic equipment. For key devices, appropriate cooling strategies are needed to prevent overheating and failure.
A good thermal management should be designed at the conceptual stage of the development process. These products are often complex systems and require the cooperation of several design departments with different backgrounds: IC and FPGA engineers, PCB layout engineers, manufacturing engineers, software developers, reliability engineers, mechanical designers, marketing, radio frequency and high-speed electrical engineers, etc. In the concept stage, decisions related to the feasibility of the product need to be made. It involves "can the heat energy generated by the system be effectively managed according to the given space, size, desired performance and function?
Mechanical designers or thermal design engineers can easily create conceptual models of IC, PCB and chassis, and then simulate them to see whether they can dissipate heat effectively. If so, the design can proceed from the perspective of thermal management. If the personnel of any other design department find it impossible to proceed after the concept stage, they may need to change the functional specifications, size specifications, devices used or some other factors of the system. However, if the problem is found and redesigned in the subsequent development process, the cost will increase significantly.
Using the latest thermal simulation software, the design engineer can carry out front-end analysis, grasp the trend, quickly solve the problem, quickly solve and compare different schemes, so as to make greater project progress, so as to effectively supplement the work of full-time analysts in the later verification stage of the project. Compared with traditional CFD software, the simulation cycle time can be shortened from a few weeks to a few days or a day. Designers can compare a variety of design schemes to develop more competitive and reliable products, and shorter simulation cycle time can speed up the launch of products.
