Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Goodman, Tom
• Snyder, David
• Weiss, Jonathan

Titel

Predicting Circuit Board Hot Spots

Ist Teil von

• Computer-aided engineering, 1990-09, Vol.9 (9), p.71

Ort / Verlag

Cleveland: Informa

Erscheinungsjahr

1990

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• Modern printed circuit boards (PCB) are increasingly dense, resulting in computational and control circuitry with higher power levels and the potential for heat buildup. To determine appropriate cooling requirements and safety margins under various operating conditions, NMB Technologies Inc. is integrating new thermal management tools into PCB layout and packaging. This type of computer software can predict where hot spots will develop on boards, enabling designers to model various layouts and to explore modifications such as alternate component placement and heat sink additions. With the help of concurrent electronic and mechanical modeling, PCB design and packaging can be done faster, more reliably, and in a finer grid of optimization. Board layout design packages, such as those offered by Mentor Graphics Corp., prevent design errors involving thermal buildup. For example, ProtoTherm, part of Mentor's PackageStation design system, models conduction, convection, and radiation based on the finite-element method. PackageStation and AutoTherm, another design tool from Mentor, enable designers to lay out boards in through-hole technique.