One of the primary tasks of the thermal engineer is to determine the temperature of the junction (active circuitry on an integrated circuit) for the various packages in a system. Measurements performed in the industry-standard test environment are often used in this endeavor. The most common thermal metric [1,2] is the junction-to-air thermal resistance, JA (pronounced theta, … [Read more...]
Test methods for characterizing the thermal transmission properties of phase-change thermal interface materials
All phase change thermal interface materials are designed to minimize the thermal resistance in an interface between a heat generating component and a heat sink. How well they achieve this goal in a specific application depends on how judiciously their phase change characteristics are matched to the interface specifications. The purpose of this paper is to present the results … [Read more...]
Acoustic noise emission and communication systems in the next century
Acoustic noise emission is one of several physical design issues addressed during the design of telecommunications and information technology equipment. In most systems, noise is a by-product of the air-movers used for system cooling. The amount of heat dissipated in electronic systems cooled by forced convection is directly proportional to volumetric flow rate. The flow rate, … [Read more...]
Beyond the arrow plot – New methods for flow visualization
Within the realm of CFD-based flow analysis, the presentation of data is a vital issue. Researchers and developers need to gain insight, and non-technical managers and commercial staff have a critical need to understand the true ramifications of the data. Unfortunately, current methods for visualizing flow have limitations that make it difficult to interpret vast quantities of … [Read more...]
Convection and radiation loss from a fin
In last issue's column, we discussed heat loss by convection and radiation from a printed circuit board in which heat spreads in a 2-D pattern. Here, we look at a slightly simpler situation, namely that of heat transfer by a fin into the ambient air. The situation is illustrated in Figure 1, where, for simplicity, the heat is shown flowing only out of the top surface of the … [Read more...]
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