Mechanical Analysis Blog

Just a very quick post to alert you to the new ElectronicsCooling Magazine web site.  We’ve updated the look of the site to improve navigation ahead of the relaunch of the printed magazine. Here’s just some of the features of the new site: New look and feel Search Improved Article and Content Navigation by author; category (Calculation Corner, New Products, Technical Brief); channel (Industries, … Read More

Thermal Management, Thermal Design, FloEFD, FloTHERM.PCB, Electronics Cooling, Design Process, FloTHERM.PACK, CFD

Mentor’s Thermal Design Software Is The Best. OK, say’s who? It’s the conclusion from some independent research carried out by Aberdeen Research Group. Last time I showed that Aberdeen had found that Mentor’s customers are almost 3 times faster at completing thermal verification than users of other tools. Let’s take a look at why that is. Aberdeen found evidence of what users of other tools were doing … Read More

Thermal Management, Thermal Design, Design Flow, Design Process, CFD, FloTHERM.PCB, PCB Respin, 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

I’ve already admitted my love of cheesy sci-fi movies. The thing that always amazed me was the fact that despite traveling thousands of light-years from Earth, the intrepid explorers were always able to communicate with all sorts of exotic looking aliens whom they’d never encountered before in what else but English!  Fantastic… if only real life was that easy. Sometimes briefing meetings remind me … Read More

Free, FloViz, Communicate, Electronics Cooling, CFD, FloTHERM.PCB, FloVENT, Engineer

Just a quick post to let you know yours truly will be giving a presentation on: Thermal Design: A Key Part of the Electronics Design Flow At the UK Solutions Expo at the Heritage Motor Centre in Gaydon on 12th November. Miniaturization continues to increase power densities at all packaging levels, forcing design teams to identify new methods of cooling. The challenge remains consistent at all levels … Read More

Thermal Design, Shortening Design Time, Thermal Management, Electronics Cooling, Cost Saving, PCB Respin, Reliability, FloTHERM.PACK, FloTHERM.PCB

In “What’s black and stuck on a PCB?” I promised I’d get back to writing about FloTHERM.PACK and how it can really help your thermal modelling by helping you build accurate thermal models of chip packages. Assuming you’ve been using FloTHERM or FloTHERM.PCB without FloTHERM.PACK I guess I first need convince you about why you should bother. To help me do that I’d like to introduce you to the concept … Read More

Thermal Model, DELPHI Model, 2-Resistor Model, IC Packaging, Thermal Headroom, FloTHERM.PACK, FloTHERM.PCB

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

A while back I read an article on How to survive a recession, which discusses how small businesses can recession-proof themselves and gives some good common-sense advice. Historically, small companies are been at greatest risk during a recession, yet being smaller means they are more agile, and so better able to make the changes necessary to survive and even prosper when the upturn comes. The article … Read More

Design Flow, FloTHERM.PCB, Cost Saving, Surviving, PCB Respin, Recession