IESF Europe 2012: Electronics Thermal Design and Measurement

TECHNICAL SESSION Find out everything new about the latest and greatest release of FloEFD Version 12. This session will demonstrate the new features that assist the engineer, not only in the design of LED & luminaire but also in other general application challenges. The new features of Version 12 will be demonstrated along with how they can benefit in design analysis. FloEFD V12 can also speed up the design cycle with the new capabilities such as pre and post-processing, with the improved user experience and LED simulation capabilities. The new version demonstrates capabilities that will help to achieve more results, faster and more accurately.

KEYNOTE 1962-2012: 50 years of endless progress.
- Quantity of light multiplied by more than 5.
- Environment adjustment in function of road, fog, rain, speed, vehicles.
- Headlamps/rearlamps, levers of styling differentiation.
- « Seeing better » but also « Being seen better»
- Lighting: reduction of energy consumption
The 2 trends.
- Growth of intelligent lightings
- Growth penetration of LED
The 5 consequences.
The main statement and the three messages.

TECHNICAL SESSION The number of LEDs in automotive headlamps increases rapidly month on month. Even in middle class or compact class cars halogen or xenon bulbs are being replaced by LED technology. LED light output and lifetime are strongly influenced by the temperature of the LED junction. Influenced by the motor compartment, LEDs get very hot and therefore a strict temperature control in any operating case is necessary. An additional challenge in the design process of headlamps is that the LED as a source is often also changed in parallel. To solve these challenges it is necessary to use a measurement system which ensures exact measurements within a short time period, and to make these measurements in the microscopic areas of LED package and interfaces without influencing the junction itself.

Mentor Graphics, T3Ster system has been used in Automotive Lighting Reutlingen since 2009 across different applications during development; to characterize and qualify the LED internally, to optimize interface material, PCB and thermal layouts, to validate the LED performance over lifetime and to control the manufacturing processes. Some useful characteristics and future improvements of the T3Ster system will be discussed in the presentation. All tasks lead to a safe and optimal use of LEDs in headlamp systems.

TECHNICAL SESSION Space constrained and high temperature environments, coupled with an increase in the functional density of automotive electronic, has resulted in the need for thermal management to be considered throughout the design process and across the supply chain. High operating packaged IC temperatures effects both reliability and, especially in terms of LEDs, functional performance. Conductive or convective cooling strategies require the heat that is dissipated within the electronics to be removed effectively to the surrounding ambient thus minimising the temperature rises within the system.

Determining whether a thermal design results in the required temperatures necessitates simulation to be deployed from as early in the design as possible. The main challenges in that simulation involve determination of key thermal resistances that the heat experiences as it passes from heat source to surrounding ambient. From die to die attach, from package to PCB, from PCB to chassis; obtaining good quality part and material thermal data is the key to producing usefully accurate thermal simulation data.

TECHNICAL SESSION A low thermal resistance of a high power Light Emitting Diode (LED) is one of the most interesting product parameter, because it enables to build up and run applications with reasonable low junction temperature, leading to an efficient product with a long lifetime.
However to ensure such good product performance over the whole product lifetime it must be ensured that the thermal interface material used in such LED application are able to withstand the thermo-mechanical stress which the application is faced in the field. Therefore the thermal characterisation in combination with accelerated stress testing is a must during the product development process.

WORKSHOP These workshop based sessions are aimed at increasing your hands-on experience on thermal simulation with the FloEFD and FloTHERM software as well as T3Ster and TERALED hardware, including how the products can be applied in your industry.
The day will be split into two sessions- firstly to become acquainted with the software before moving on to the hardware in the solutions later in the day. Our team members will be on hand to demonstrate the performance solutions offered.

TECHNICAL SESSION Modern radio and navigation systems, i.e. multimedia systems, for automotive applications are highly
complex systems with a large variety of mechanical and electrical components, modules and assemblies,
such as frame brackets, front module with LED-backlight display, PCBs, drives, fan, connectors, heat
sinks or tuner modules. The design of these automotive multimedia systems has to fulfill requirements
from mechanical stability and thermal management to electromagnetic compliance.Therfore, the
thermal design requires the interaction of mechanical, electrical and software engineers in order to
achieve a thermal system solution, hence a multi-disciplinary design and optimization problem.
In this presentation we address thermal simulation as an integrated part of our design process for
automotive multimedia systems. We focus on typical tasks and problems involved in the thermal design
and address modeling requirements from chip to the complete system and beyond (dashboard)
necessary for thermal analysis. The knowledge about critical temperature levels, heat and fluid flow or the
necessity to implement a fan highly effects design decisions. Employed is the CFD-program FLOTHERM
to simulate the three cooling mechanism conduction, convection, radiation. Such up-front simulations
increase customer satisfaction and enable us to test and modify system and components as virtual
prototypes before performing physical tests and building real prototypes. Due to a technically matured
system, less time and money have to be spent as the number of tests/prototypes is reduced.

TECHNICAL SESSION Throughout the last year Automotive Lighting has been the subject of many innovations; new light sources, driving assistance and lighting functions, which have led to sophisticated styling trends challenging today’s automotive lighting engineer.

To keep pace with innovations, automotive OEMs and TIERs use thermal and optical simulation software to develop LED Systems. All of these tools are well established in the automotive lighting industry; nevertheless, efficiency in workflow can still be optimized. This presentation shows some of the possible benefits to be gained from using thermal and optical simulations in one simulation step. The Thermo-Optical behavior of light sources and materials will be demonstrated.