Mechanical Analysis Blog

It could save your company a shed load of time and money… Interested? OK, here’s some research by Aberdeen Group, which I presented at several of the recent Solutions Expos. First off, the Mechanical Analysis Division’s customers choose Mentor’s tools because they recognise them as being the best. They don’t just make do with tools available as part of another software suite, as shown below in the … Read More

Thermal Management, Concurrent CFD, Cost Saving, CFD, Fluent Design, Thermal Design, Design Process, Electronics Cooling

While I was waiting for the last few people for my presentation ‘Thermal Design: A Key Part of the Electronics Design Flow’ at the UK Solutions Expo at the Heritage Motor Center in Gaydon a couple of weeks back I thought I’d poll the audience with a couple of questions. It’s rare that I get to speak to an audience of electronics engineers, so I was interested to see how they view thermal design. First … Read More

Upfront Analysis, Thermal Design, Design Collaboration, Design Process, Concurrent CFD, FloTHERM.PCB, Fluent Design, FloEFD

Some more thoughts on the fluent design vs. laminar flow analogy In my last post I used the example of an airfoil to illustrate a product design (object) that passes smoothly, or fluently through the design process (a fluid) without causing much turbulence (design rework) that otherwise disrupts the downstream flow (late in the design process) making the flow take longer to recover (increasing the … Read More

Upfront Analysis, Concurrent CFD, Design Flow, CFD, Fluent Design, Fluid Dynamics, Design Process, FloEFD

Electrical engineers often talk about a ‘design flow’, which Wikipedia defines as ‘the explicit combination of electronic design automation tools to accomplish the design of an integrated circuit.’ I heard the term a lot when making presentations at the Solutions Expos in the last few weeks. To someone with a background in fluid dynamics, flow means something rather different, but what electronic engineers … Read More

Upfront, Concurrent Design, Design Flow, CFD, Flow Behavior, Fluid Dynamics, Design Process, FloEFD

Thermal headroom is a concept I’ve been pushing for a few years, but I guess many people aren’t familiar with it, so I thought some additional commentary would be appropriate. Here goes: What I’ve drawn looks pretty simple. Starting from the ambient we can attribute to total temperature rise for some critical IC to a temperature rise in the air, the PCB and/or heat sink, then the temperature rise in … Read More

Thermal Management, Thermal Headroom, Design Flow, Design Process, CFD, FloTHERM.PACK, Thermal Design, FloEFD

I’d expected to be posting about FloTHERM.PACK this time, but I thought I’d better let you know what I’ve been working on the last couple of weeks instead. I’ve been putting together the Mechanical Analysis Division’s presentations for the European Solutions Expos in Finland, The Netherlands, Sweden, and Egypt amongst other places, plus the Alcatel Thales forum in Paris and U2U in Munich. Details of … Read More

Thermal Design, Solutions Expo, Thermal Management, FloTHERM.PACK, Design Process, Saving Cost, Saving Time, FloTHERM.PCB, PCB Respin

I thought I’d put up a brief post about an exciting series of free web seminars that address key engineering challenges in product design. The first of these is a seminar aimed at engineering managers to explain how their mechanical designers can perform a CFD Analysis without leaving the familiar comfort of their MCAD tool. Web Seminar: CFD Analysis for MCAD Designers - Better Products, Faster Historically … Read More

CFD History, Design Process, CFD, Mesh Generation, Meshing, FloEFD, Fluid Dynamics

Strictly speaking that’s mechanical engineers, and the information comes from Parametric Design Corporation (PTC), in their white paper Five Things You Should Know About 3D CAD Software. As PTC say - it’s a startling fact. Having had experience of keeping track of my own time to charge to different projects the figure really jumped out at me. I found that if you take away the time spent on internal … Read More

Design Flow, Fluid Dynamics, ROI, FloEFD, Return on Investment, CAE Market, Design Process, Flow Behavior

To many professional analysts with a background in Computational Fluid Dynamics, most electronics cooling applications look pretty straightforward. There aren’t any complex physical processes to model like combustion (well hopefully not), high pressures or high temperatures (again, hopefully not) or high speed flow. Typically there are no free surfaces or multiphase flows, and no moving geometry. So, … Read More

Electronics Cooling, Design Process, CFD, Mesh Generation, Meshing