Author: Mentor.com :: Mechanical Analysis Resources

See how embedded concurrent CFD allows CAD users to witness how their design will perform before it goes for prototyping!

Obtain a 30-day free trial of FloTHERM^® IC, a web-based tool for semiconductor thermal characterization and design.

Develop and enforce thermal design constraints for your PCB design flow.

SEMI-THERM, Santa Clara, Calif., February 24, 2010—Mentor Graphics Corporation (NASDAQ: MENT) today announced the FloTHERM® IC productivity tool targeting the semiconductor industry for thermal characterization and design. Addressing increased complexity, chip density, and high-speed requirements for today’s silicon designs, the FloTHERM IC solution is deployed as a unique web-based platform that delivers a high level of automation to the design tasks associated with full-spectrum thermal characterization and validation.

Free 30 day trial.   FloTHERM IC offers the ease-of-use of Smartpart technology combined with the power of FloTHERM® to greatly boost productivity of thermal analysis in the semiconductor industry – immediately and on the user’s desktop.

FloTHERM PACK is a web-based application for creating semiconductor package representations as well as compact thermal models of IC components.

During this web seminar, where the presenter will discuss the complexities surrounding the design of a  water pump, analyzing the forces it creates and what this means for the overall design of the finished product.

This presentation will show you how Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) analysis software – can help reduce costs associated with design and operation in the built environment. Resulting in a greener, more responsible design.

WILSONVILLE, Ore., January 25, 2010 – Mentor Graphics Corporation (NASDAQ: MENT) today announced that the Tessent™ YieldInsight™ IC yield analysis solution and the FloEFD™ electronics cooling simulation software were chosen as two of EDN magazine’s Hot 100 Electronic Products for 2009. The Hot 100 is EDN’s list of “the products and technologies that in 2009 heated up the electronics world and grabbed the attention of our editors and our readers.”

Develop and enforce thermal design constraints for your PCB design flow.

Learn about proper thermal design solutions for IC components.

Join us for an excellent networking opportunity and to learn about the newest releases and capabilities of Pro/Engineer and CFD simulation tools.

I’m the first to admit that I’m no Julia Child – but from time to time I get the baking bug … especially around the holidays. I love the smell of holiday baking… cinnamon and cloves and mix them in with the smell of a live Christmas tree … divine.  Unfortunately holiday baking is a bit of a hassle because I have to keep a keen watch over the goodies in the oven and turn them around to make sure they bake evenly. Before you think I’ve gone off the deep end, hear me out. We have a fan-assisted oven. These ovens move the hot air inside the oven so you get an even cooking temperature faster. Due to this increased effectiveness you can cook at a lower temperature. Not a bad concept but in reality it is far from true at the Saye household.  To get evenly cooked stuff, I need to turn whatever is inside around several times. Not good — especially for someone who likes to multitask and can get easily distracted.

Simulation of airflow inside a single-tray, fan-assisted oven. Image courtesy of Mentor Graphics, Mechanical Analysis Division.

I had given up all hope of baking goodies for the holidays until I watched a recent presentation on optimizing flow fields — to watch this demo please follow this link  Simulating and Optimizing Flow Fields for the on-demand video.  The model used for the presentation was very similar to the oven we have at home. The analysis showed that the air near the oven door remained much cooler  (I grabbed a still shot from the presentation to show you what I mean).   Ok so I already knew this by observing the sad state of 1/2 of my cupcakes but seeing the analysis results made me feel marginally better – at least now I know I’m not that _bad_ of a cook. Oh and you may be pleased to hear that after watching this presentation I baked a batch of cookies and moved the pan closer to the back of the oven (where the fan sits) and guess what? The cookies were not too toxic!

I guess the moral of the story is: when dealing with flow fields of any type, simulation can be an incredibly valuable tool for design engineers. It can help you visualize and understand problem areas so you can create much better designs and ultimately alleviate some heartache for your customers down the line.

Hmmm… maybe I’ll ask Santa for a new oven next year but I’ll have to make sure the elves in Santa’s workshop use CFD to build the perfect oven 😉  Speak with you in January!

Happy Holidays,
Nazita

PS. As I’m typing today’s post, London is covered in a light coating of snow so I would like to wish you and yours a warm, safe and festive holiday season. Thank you for your support during the past year and I look forward to speaking with you next year.

On the sliding scale of thermal component model representation king of all is a ‘detailed’ model. A 3D definition of all of the internal construction geometry and material properties does away with any of the accuracy inconsistency issues associated with the derived CTM (thermal resistor network type) approach. (more…)

If you haven’t come across this short video, it gives a good overview of how FloEFD is blazing a path of least resistance so mechanical designers can streamline their workflow using Concurrent CFD – CFD embedded in the mechanical design environment.

Note that it’s ONLY by embedding CFD within the MCAD tool that these time savings can be achieved, and FloEFD is the ONLY Concurrent CFD solution available today. It’s a new paradigm in CFD allowing analysis to be done upfront during conceptual design and concurrently with design changes made as the design is elaborated.

That’s it for me for this year. I’ve got a few things in the pipe for next year – some cool Indy Car analysis done by the guys at Voxdale, a couple of Flash animations that really help explain why Concurrent CFD is THE way to go when it comes to compressing design times to develop a fluent design process – plus some other stuff I’m hoping to get back to, like the BBQ study.

Check back early in the New Year.

Season’s Greetings!

Dr. J, Hampton Court

This web seminar will discuss why it is useful to characterize the thermal properties of a component and what modeling methods are available.

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.

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When a person describes their ideal design software, or any software for that matter, Ease-of-Use is always on the list of desirable attributes. It makes sense that in order to be productive with the software in the shortest amount of time the software must be easy to use.  All of the  CAD and CFD tools I work with strive to achieve this goal (except for one which I won’t name and it isn’t one of our products) and hit the mark most of the time.  For me, when considering CFD tools for the design engineer,  the Ease-Of-Use concept extends from the start of the conceptual design through to the report that gets the final design approved.  Factors that are important are:

1. Speed of manual geometry creation
2. Ability to integrate existing MCAD and ECAD data
3. Ability to export MCAD and ECAD data
4. Speed and robustness of mesh and solver
5. Ability to review results to steer the design
6. Ability to share results to convince management

For PCB analysis we have taken Ease-Of-Use to a new level,  a level where you don’t even need to open the software.  From a command line you can feed the solver an IDF file of the PCB (or even better, our FloEDA file) and link it to a thermal parts library to replace the critical components with a proper thermal representation.  The mesh and solve are handled automatically and when the run is complete, say 15 minutes later, an html report is created.  The report lists which components are running too hot and even provides pretty pictures of surface temperatures.  For me, this is an evolutionary step with CFD.   While I can truly appreciate all of the meshing, conservation equations, and sophisticated numerical schemes to reach conservation, I don’t always need to see it.

PCB thermal analysis lends itself to this sort of Hands Free approach, at least in the preliminary stages, because of the analysis environment and the desired output.  In the early stages of a PCB thermal design it is either going to be considered in natural convection or have some air forced over it.  The desired output is the junction temperature,  it’s always about the junction temperature.

Their is another industry that could benefit from the same type of automation, at least in the early design phases, and that is Data Centers.  At the early stages,  it is a room laid out on a 2?x2? grid with Racks, CRACS, and floor tiles.  Artistic representation below:

It seems to me that there could be a standard similar to IDF, that lays out the room.  In fact, maybe the same standard could be used.  This could be linked to a library that replaces the place holders with a proper thermal and airflow definition.  The output is well understood, at least in my mind.  What are the Rack inlet temperatures?  What are the floor tile flow rates?  What is the cooling load on each CRAC.  And give me a few contour plots to show the managers.

60-minute web seminar, where the presenter will discuss analyzing the inside of an oven, making sure the heat flow inside is even and what this means for the overall design of the finished product.

Integrated circuits can be found pretty much everywhere – in electronic equipment such as computers, phones, traffic lights and in anything that uses electronic components even planes, trains and automobiles! These little chips are getting more and more powerful thanks to advancing technology. But at the same time the devices that they go into are getting smaller and smaller; thus, forcing engineers to try to fit in more powerful components into a smaller area. As a result, engineers need to come up with effective heat removal – effective both in terms of cost and the physical act of removing that pesky heat. CFD software and simulation are the fastest and most cost effective way of understanding how to solve these challenges.

If you are a thermal engineer and are grappling with these issues, I would like to invite you to attend an online web meeting titled: Accurate Component Junction and Case Temperature which will take place on December 16 at 4 PM Eastern US time. I know that some of you may be unable to attend this event (especially if you’re based in Asia or Europe) so if you are interested in the topic please register for the event. We will send you a link to the archived event after the meeting so you can watch it at your convenience. Anyway, this presentation will discuss why it is useful to characterize the thermal properties of a component and what modelling methods are available. The pros and cons of the different methods and in what situations they may be appropriate will also be covered. I think you’ll like this presentation. The presentation will be made by one of our most excellent engineers, Ms. Kelly Cordell-Morris. She’s has been with our division for about 5 years and has pretty much seen it all (insofar as thermal challenges and solving them is concerned). So she’s an especially good resource to pose your questions! Hope to see you there.

Until next time,
Nazita