FloTherm 9 addresses thermal bottlenecks
Rick Nelson, Editor-in-Chief -- EDN, November 3, 2010
Mentor Graphics has announced its next-generation FloTherm
3-D CFD (computational fluid-dynamics) software for electronics-cooling
applications. Erich Bürgel, general manager of Mentor's mechanical-analysis
division, says that the patent-pending technology in the FloTherm 9 software
provides Bn (bottleneck) and Sc (short cut) fields so that, for the first time,
engineers can identify where and why heat-flow congestion occurs in electronic
design. The software also identifies thermal short cuts to help quickly resolve
design problems.The Bn and the Sc fields convert the software from an observation tool, which identifies heat- management problems, to an effective thermal-design-problem-solving tool that suggests potential solutions to the designer. He says that CamSemi has used the software as a thermal-design tool.
According to Nigel Heather, vice president of engineering at CamSemi, FloTherm 9 saved the company time and the cost when developing an IC for a new generation of Energy Star-compliant mobile-phone chargers. "The baseline simulation using the bottleneck feature quickly highlighted a potential thermal issue, and further iterations confirmed our solution," he says. "To achieve the same result by building prototype boards would have taken a long time and drawn resources away from other critical work."
Bürgel explains that the Bn field shows where in a design the heat path is being congested as it attempts to flow from high-junction-temperature points to the ambient. Design changes to these bottlenecks can help solve the heat-flow problem. The Sc field highlights possible approaches, in which the addition of a simple element, such as a gap pad or chassis extrusion, provides a new effective heat-flow path to further cool the system.
FloTherm 9 also supports the importing of XML model and geometry data to enable the integration FloTherm into data flows. Version 9 also has a direct interface to the Mentor Graphics' Expedition PCB-design platform. The direct interface enables users to import native Expedition PCB data and delete or edit additional objects, such as heat sinks, thermal vias, board cutouts, and electromagnetic cans, for more accurate thermal-model-design development.
Mentor Graphics
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