To allow for sufficient time to digest new information and to gather hands-on experience, the course has been enriched with homework assignments that can be attempted in the evening and will be discussed and demonstrated during the following lesson.
The content is based on cooling of electronics in a system engineering context, following the well-known V model of system level – subsystem level - component level, requirements flow down and capabilities flow up. Application of the system engineering concepts to the thermal domain and physics of heat transfer will be demonstrated and practiced.
Training time is divided roughly equally over theory and practice. Practice sessions will take the form of try-it-yourself exercises, followed by step-by-step guidance and demonstration.
Participants do not need to be familiar with thermal simulation or to have access to simulation software. All training exercises are spreadsheet (Excel) based. Thermal simulation will be demonstrated using commercially available CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) codes, but the concepts are also applicable to FEM (Finite Element Method) thermal codes.
The training material includes worked versions of the exercises.
The program of the training is as follows:
- Introduction, Thermal systems engineering, V model and applicability to electronic cooling, Physics of heat transfer: conduction, convection, radiation, heating and cooling;
- Conjugate heat transfer, Heat sinks, Fan cooling, Boxes;
- Introduction to Thermal measurements. Specifications and requirements. Thermal rules of thumb. Thermal Ways of working. Step-by-step thermal problem solving. Guided exercise and Demonstration of step-by-step plan;
- Step-by-step strategy for new thermal designs. Limitations of spreadsheet models. Thermal simulation. Guided exercise on thermal system design, followed by a demonstration of the same case using computer simulations. Question and Answer. Introduction of a case study;
- Cooling solutions. Discussion of the case study. Guided step-by-step solution of the case study. CFD verification.
