National’s new LED sim tool balances cost, heat, and space

Designing LED-based lighting requires balancing LED performance, power control topologies, and thermal management devices, while keeping cost and space requirements in line. The two biggest challenges in LED lighting design are managing cost and heat. Manufacturers rate their LEDs luminous efficacy at a certain level at the optimal light output to driving current. But you can overdrive those LEDs to a much higher level and light output, allowing you to use fewer LEDs in your system and lower the cost. The down side is that higher current generates more heat which lowers the actual light generation rate out of the LED, and the higher current lowers the overall efficiency and power dissipation effectiveness of the system. Balancing all of these design trade-offs is a complex mathematical dance.

National’s Webench LED Architect is a free online tool that allows you to perform quick simulations based on the  parameters you specify for light output (up to 100,000 lumens), operating voltages, and ambient temperature. The tool evaluates LED performance, electronic drive current and heat compensation in seconds, and analyzes 350 currently-available LEDs from 12 LED manufacturers, 30 heat sinks from Aavid, 35 LED drivers, and a library of 21,000 electronic passive components. The tool also surveys single quantity prices for the components from various distributors to provide pricing information for low-volume orders, which is an invaluable feature for balancing components costs into your design trade-offs. Check out the tool for yourself at www.national.com/LEDarchitect.

You can also see it demonstrated at EDN’s Designing with LEDs Workshop in Chicago on September 29. Register here while the early bird pricing is still in effect.