One of the highlights of the electronics thermal management calender is the annual SEMI-THERM symposium held in sunny San Jose, California and it’s with the usual sense of excitement that I’m preparing to attend it. The acquisition of Flomerics by Mentor Graphics was two and half years ago and, despite the expectations of many, the activities and success of the … [Read more...]

For a blog series focused on thermal design there has been precious little design presented so far. Design is the process of making a plan for the construction of an object/product. Whether you subscribe to the rational or action-centric model of the design process, some form of iteration and adaption is used to arrive at a design that is fit for production. Trying an idea, … [Read more...]

All good things come to those who wait. For beer this entails a trade off between anticipation and satisfaction. If, too soon after you put the room temperature beer in the fridge, you get your child to grab a beer for you, your thirst might be quenched but your satisfaction might not be. Wait too long for it to cool down and you might forget you wanted one, or go to sleep, or … [Read more...]

As the ancient proverb goes; a beer fridge without beer is like X Factor, utterly pointless. You’d have thought that by clogging up the insides of the fridge with pesky cans of beer you’d cripple it’s thermal performance. As someone once said of Simon Cowell …”O, how wrong you are”. When modelling a can of beer in FloTHERM, in fact when … [Read more...]

The futility of investigating the cooling effectiveness of any empty fridge is beginning to dawn on me, the irony of which is matched only by my new-years-resolution-inspired-sobriety. Never mind, let’s see this particular study through…  Whether in a beer ridden fury or in moments of Galilean scientific investigation, you might find yourself kicking the fridge over … [Read more...]