Today virtually all serious thermal analysis and design calculations for electronic packages are performed using various commercial flow and thermal conduction codes. Nonetheless, there are still many instances, especially in the early phases of a project, when the thermal engineer finds it advantageous to perform so called "back of the envelope" calculations without resorting … [Read more...]
Estimating Thermal Resistance For Fin-To-Fin Thermal Couplers
Introduction Most readers of ElectronicsCooling magazine are familiar with the use of fins to increase convective heat transfer area to achieve a lower thermal resistance from a component to the cooling fluid. This Calculation Corner article will address the use of interdigitated fins to provide a mechanically tolerant thermal path between two opposing surfaces (e.g., the back … [Read more...]
Cooling Options And Challenges Of High Power Semiconductor Modules
Introduction Trends in power electronics systems and devices over the last decade have placed increasing demands on the efficiencies of the thermal management systems used for power Metal Oxide Semiconductor Field-Effect Transistor (MOSFET) and Insulated Gate Bipolar Transistor (IGBT) modules. The pressure to decrease the size of power electronics systems and, subsequently, the … [Read more...]
A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Heatsink
Introduction When faced with the task of calculating the temperature of an IC in a package, which has an external heat sink mounted to it, a thermal engineer usually obtains a values of three thermal resistances: ΘJC , the junction-to-case thermal resistance for the package, ΘCS , the case-to-sink thermal resistance representing the thermal interface material (TIM) between the … [Read more...]
Estimating The Effect Of Flow Bypass On Parallel Plate-Fin Heat Sink Performance
In past issues of Electronics Cooling, methodologies were presented for estimating parallel plate-fin heat sink thermal resistance [1] and pressure drop [2]. The underlying assumption for both articles was that all the flow delivered by the fan is forced to go through the channels formed between the fins. As noted in the second article this is often not the case and much of the … [Read more...]
