Editor's Pick: Electronic Cooling Simulator Enhanced

Design teams are charged with cramming electronics into pretty much everything these days. It's within the realm of possibility, albeit just barely, that complex designs like Rags, the irksome robot dog in the old Woody Allen movie “Sleeper,” could be one of your future assignments. This makes properly managing the thermal performance of electronics both with dense architectures and within complex geometries nothing to bark at. Today's Editor's Pick of the Week takes a look at a toolset designed to help electronic devices keep their cool.

At the risk of understatement, FloTHERM XT from Mentor Graphics has an impressive pedigree. It leverages powerhouse technology used in the company's FloTHERM electronics cooling solution as well as meshing and solver technology from Mentor's FloEFD CAD-centric concurrent CFD (computational fluid dynamics) software.

FloTHERM XT is designed to provide designers and thermal specialists electronic cooling simulation capabilities for all stages of the mechanical design process from concept development through manufacturing. Image courtesy of Mentor Graphics Corp.

Beyond powerful analysis functionality, what FloTHERM XT means for you is that it provides an integrated mechanical design and electronic design automation solution for electronics cooling simulation and optimization. It's said to be able to handle simple and complex electronic systems from concept through validation and manufacturing.

FloTHERM XT seems designed to make thermal management jobs both quicker and easier. For example, among its key attributes are a CAD-centric user interface, SmartParts, and an integrated environment for parametric design studies. It also plays nice when importing files from major CAD and EDA (electronic design automation) platforms.

When Mentor recently released its new edition of FloTHERM XT, it cited user feedback as the basis for many of the enhancements for simulating thermal effects of complex geometries. Among these upgrades is a new sliding mesh capability for simulating rotating parts in electronic enclosures. A Design of Experiments (DOE) scenario table has also been added so that you can set up a number of studies to ensure the best coverage of your design field.

There's now also thermal territory simulation. This is a new feature that Mentor calls critical for detailed copper “under the component” designs, used to draw heat away from a component.

In short, if the job of cooling electronics dogs you, FloTHERM XT might be what you're looking for. You can learn more about the latest release of FloTHERM XT from today's main writeup. There's a link at the end of the main text to a short video overview, or you can take in an on-demand webinar for a more in-depth introduction. Hit today's Editor's Pick of the Week link and make that call yourself.

Thanks, Pal. – Lockwood

Anthony J. Lockwood

Editor at Large, DE