hello everyone and welcome to today's
webinar on CV for electronics packaging
glad you joined us today my name is
David I'm CEO and co-founder of sim
scale
and before we dive into the topic today
I quickly wanted to get some technical
things out of the way you should be able
to hear me by now we're using
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great that works thank you very much
also go to a webinar allows you to ask
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I'll try to follow up by email or
there's also an active forum on sem
scale where you can where you can ask
more questions all right then let's get
started
the to quickly put the importance of
today's topic in context we're seeing
such electronics or cooling applications
thermal management simulations on same
skill allowed so we've we're seeing on a
daily basis you know new users new
customers being interested in running
such thermal analysis of some sort of
enclosure sometimes they are seal some
sometimes they are open all sorts of
different cooling strategies and I think
the overall context is all the time that
many many products get equipped with
semiconductors equipped with some sort
of sensors that produce heat and that a
couple of years ago or decade ago didn't
have any same conductors in there right
and the common denominator is the
Internet of Things right that there's
many many products being equipped with
sensors and all of them produce heat and
now products were a decade ago it was
not necessary to manage any you know
thermal or to do any thermal management
of these products meanwhile it is right
and this is and this is a little chart I
had that I think shows well that this
trend is here this state right that more
and more industries more and more
consumer products more and more yeah
things we we see around us will be
equipped with semiconductors and all of
them will produce heat and that's gonna
be managed right that or that wants to
be management now ultimately that's on
us as engineers right to manage that -
exactly prevent this right a couple of
photos indicating one when things go
wrong - what we'll do today is a
hands-on design scenario let's quickly
also manage some expectations for for
the session today we call we call these
webinars editorial demos right where we
show in 20 minutes I'm shooting for 20
minutes today let's see if if I can
stick with that stick within that time
frame where we show in 20 minutes a
super-fast walkthrough through a project
that has been completed on same scale
from a particular industry right so what
we'll see today is in an example
application of we're in electronics
packaging and electronics enclosure has
been simulated on sim scale would regard
to whether or not the cooling efficiency
is good enough right whether or not the
chips that are in this enclosure
maintain a sufficiently low temperature
for normal operations that's what we're
going to look at today I'll try to give
you a feeling for how Sims Gil looks and
feels like how how the workflow
generally looks like but we won't go
into a lot of detail right we won't go a
lot into you know CAD preparation
physics CFD theory be cetera this is not
what this is about today but the good
news is that the the exact project we're
going to look at today is a
as a public project on same scale so if
you are interested in in seeing the
details you know how the simulation was
set up and when I asked questions about
that feel free to do so afterwards right
and dig into this project and see see
its details
alright the design scenario today we're
looking at is this little piece of high
power density electronics so we've got a
PCB board at the bottom and we've got
let me let me use the drawings over here
ok so we've got the board here at the
bottom right and then we have a bunch of
semi conductors around right here's a
CPU that you can see here where we've
got a heatsink on top of it we've got
four additional boards right one two
three four over here where we have a
bunch of capacitors a bunch of other
chips on it
we've got more chips here right like
rather a very very you know dense
packaging of different electronic
components that shall be put into an
enclosure right and let's let's click
once forward and so all or many of these
components produce heat right that have
to have a certain heat loss the CPU has
the highest rate where we're looking at
30 watts heat loss and in there is a
bunch of components around it so we've
got another 10 Watts over here so each
of these blue chips is losing 10 watts
in heat or emitting 10 watts of heat
we've got a transformer with six we've
got all these little blue components
that have five watts so we've got a ton
of wattage in here a ton of power that
is being put into that is being lost as
heat by it by all of these components
and now we want to put this thing into
an enclosure and we're asking ourselves
as engineers okay all of these chips and
all of these electronic components
should maintain a sufficiently low
temperature to operate normally right to
reduce the risk of overheating and
therefore shutting down and that's what
we want to validate right how does the
electronics enclosure needs
look like how does the cooling strategy
it needs to look like force efficient
cooling that's basically oh let me
quickly erase that there you go
and so here we can see this this board
with all its components on it in in the
context of the enclosure right and so
we've got you can see it already here on
the left we've got these these two
little circles so you can already see
that we're that we gonna use a forced
convection strategy so instead of you
know having natural convection in here
what will what we choose as engineers in
an intuitive move or intuitive decision
is we're gonna use two fans that we're
placing you on the left and we have the
outlets on the right here right so
forced convection cooling strategy this
device is going to operate on their
normal room condition so we're assuming
we're bringing in fresh air supply at 20
degrees Celsius and have an open outlet
over here and so the air is going to
move across all of these components
we're hoping that it takes enough waste
heat with it and moves it moves it out
of the enclosure to maintain
sufficiently low temperature and so the
question is will that work right and the
and that's what we're trying to answer
today so to sum this up we've got the
cooling strategy we've got all of these
components producing heat and a summary
is you can see I mean that's why we're
calling it a high power density
electronics component right so we've got
north of 600 watts total power inside
this enclosure we've got a certain
cabinet volume of this enclosure that
gives us a certain power density and the
main design constraint we're having is
we're trying to keep all of these
devices all of these come electronic
components below a certain temperature
in today's session on today's scenario
were looking to maintain 50 degrees
Celsius right or keeping all chips below
50 degrees Celsius we chose
CAD model or this application because
it's very it's a good representation of
many applications we're seeing of many
customers that are that are running
similar things on same scale
that's it might be a particularly
extreme scenario right with lots of
water Janine with lots of power in here
but this is the complexity the number of
parts they said are we oftentimes see
and so it's it's a shell serve as a good
is a good demo for today what we see
then customers oftentimes doing is
obviously and that's what we're going to
do to a fan selection so how much
airflow how much fresh air supply do the
fans need to provide for a sufficient
cooling another thing what we would we
won't look at today is fan placement
right in an obviously component
placement right what type of heat saying
how do I put these boards in here where
do I put the chips et cetera that
ultimately I have sufficient cooling
going on inside the cabinet alright just
a few words
obviously today we're gonna we're going
to use sim scale to do that there's many
different thermal simulation packages
out there so why did we decide you know
to build another one and at the core of
what we're trying to do with sim scale
is we're trying to provide a simulation
solution that can be that allows every
engineer in every designer to leverage
simulation and not just the ones you
know that are well equipped in terms of
budget well equipped in terms of
hardware and educated on these tools and
at the core of what we're doing we want
simulation to become accessible meaning
no hardware no software right we're
going to see today it's a web
application I know in the audience are
people that you know already are using
same scale but some of them don't and so
it's there's no install you simply open
up sim scaler come and on sim scalar
calm you can run your simulations inside
a web browser
second thing is cost efficiency so sim
scale starts completely for free there's
a free community plan
where you can simulate everything for
free you have all features you have
computing power but if you don't pay for
it
simulation projects are publicly
accessible and then last but not least
the know-how component the beauty of sim
skill is that everything is entirely
centralized right so all users all data
lives in the same stack right and so
there's new ways how people can
collaborate right so we're gonna see
later that there's a live chat with our
support team we've got an application
team application engineering team here
on staff that helps our users to to
navigate through simulation projects
customers can collaborate within their
company on same scale in real time et
cetera et cetera there's more more
mechanisms that that make it easier for
people to get started that's how the
work looks like it's and we can see here
a conjugate heat transfer analysis being
done on same scale so you can see on the
left you bring in your CAD model from
the CAD system of your choice we're
supporting multiple native formats also
generally exchange formats such as step
or ideas you bring it in and then you
can interact with it in 3d just as you
would on a desktop application and then
you have inside sim scale everything you
need to set up a simulation running in
the cloud and then later on and analyze
the results a few general notes so today
we're going to mainly do thermal
management right a thermal analysis and
there you have multiple options and sim
scales so you can run conductive heat
transfer only so only looking at each
answer inside solids which we can see in
the top right this is a gearbox housing
where only heat transfer has been
analyzed inside the sonnet right you can
look at convective heat transfer only
Nets that you can see for example in the
lower-right a coolant water flow so
we're only looking at heat transfer
inside the fluid phase and then what
we're going to look at today is a
coupled heat transfer analysis right
coupled which between conduction and
convection and that's for example the
two applications on the Left a heat
exchanger in the lower right an
electronics cabinet where we're looking
at conductive heat transfer inside the
solid components and then convective
heat transfer inside the air right and
the heat transfer coefficient between
both both but between solid and fluid is
being computed on the fly and that's
what we're going to look at today right
that's a typical it's typically used in
electronics cooling applications beyond
that you can see on the right there's
more things you can you can do but that
just gives you a sort of an an overview
what's possible with some skill beyond
that sim skill is a general-purpose
assimilation tool
so the we're gonna use today a finite
volume method for this for this
conjugate heat transfer analysis but
besides finite volume there's also
finite element based Solverson sim scale
so you can see here in the top right a
nonlinear analysis of a of an assembly
so we're having a fully fledged
structural mechanics simulation suit in
there as well and a bunch of more exotic
simulation or analysis types as well
that you can see here in the lower right
all right enough talk let's see
something in action and what we'll do
just to Before we jump into sim scale
what we'll do is we'll run a a conjugate
heat transfer analysis of this of this
electronics cabinet so what do you see
right now in an inert transparent
transparently colored here is basically
where air is right so inside this air
domain were simulating a convective heat
transfer so the air is being moved in
from the left through the fans and then
it flows around these solid components
takes takes on heat or takes off heat
from the solid components and moves it
out right while at the same time we're
applying different heat sources the the
wattages we've seen in the beginning
right the what
values we've seen in the beginning on
these solid components and we're looking
at conductive heat transfer in there and
then at the interface between the solid
and a fluid component heat is being
transferred into the fluid region and is
being then taken away by air that's sort
of what we're looking in right and to
give a quick preview here on the right
you can see all solid components color
coded in as temperature all right we're
gonna we're gonna analyze that in a
second in more detail and then we can
see the air being color coded by
velocity so how the are the ear is
moving around the solid components we're
gonna look at the results in a second in
more detail all right so let me quickly
move away from the from the slides and
jump on jump on a web browser okay as
mentioned before for the people that do
not yet have a sim skill account sim
scan is a web application so you go to
some scale comm in the top right you can
see the sign up button where you can
create an account it's going to take you
two minutes and once you have an account
you can simply log in log into that
American keyboard sorry for that and
once you've locked in
you can basically you can see public
projects you can see private projects so
you have access to the full the full
application inside here and so I
prepared already a dis this project for
you and as I said will not dive into the
details of this project you know how to
set it up and into the theory behind it
et cetera or not at all I just want you
to get a feeling for how Simms Gil looks
and feels so this is the this is the CAD
model we brought in in that case it was
modeled in another in a cloud CAD
software and we brought it in without it
ever touching my hard drive right
so we can see it's a let's check its 126
solid and assembly so we've got we've
got the the CPU down here right we've
got our components over here we've got
more chips there so that's that's
exactly the the PCB we were looking at
right and for you to get a feeling for
then how the next workflow is is that
you typically start by generating a
computational mesh for it depending on
you know if you're looking at a finite
volume or finite element solver you have
different mesh generation methods
available and how this looks like is you
know we're loading they're just like you
know without going into the details
zooming in so you can see that the that
the cad model has been discretized into
many different into many small cells
that's gonna be used in the in a
simulation right you can see here also
the inner components etc and as a next
step what you'll do is you'll set up the
physics of the simulation and also here
i want to be brief so we created a
simulation over here we chose the
conjugate heat transfer analysis as an
analysis type and what you then do is
then you go from top to bottom walk your
way work your way through the simulation
set up everything that's blue is
optional everything that's green is
already defined and everything that's
red is still needs to be defined right
and I'm just gonna look at the most most
interesting saying things one
interesting thing is obviously the
material assignment so where do I have
where do I have air where do I have my
semiconductors let's give the model
another few seconds to load we're
looking at for the for the for the CFD
folks among you we're looking at I think
roughly 13 million cells here their
current being being rendered
and so we've defined basically different
materials in this case here we are
looking at air and once the model is
loaded we're gonna see where air is
applied right so this is our flow volume
everything that there has been made blue
and then we can click on the other on
the other materials and see where this
is assigned right so we've got 10
we've got copper we've got silicon we've
got PCB material and down here we can
see 2 which solids this was applied and
you know you could add more materials
you have the material parameters that
characterize your your material over
here and the next and more interesting
let's quickly see now the model is fully
loaded and now we can see already a
visualization of this right so you can
see that these are the boards right the
PCB board these are the the the silicon
points then the trans the transformer
out of copper we've got tin over here
and then the more interesting things now
come down here the boundary conditions
we're looking at a fan Inlet a pressure
outlet and some fixed temperatures and
the most interesting part is down here
the heat sources right so we applied
these heat flux values the wattages
we've looked at before right at these
values and let me quickly do the
following
I'll quickly hide these faces let's hide
the entire solid there you go
so you can see that we've defined the
different wattages here right so we've
said we've got 10 watts these guys we've
got the small capacitors each of them 2
watts we've got the medium capacitors
over here right and that's how you
define these heat sources it's as easy
as down right you bring him in like that
and you can see how the simulation was
set up and then the last piece is that
you run it in that case and same scale
you've got you know all the computing
power you need so you choose the amount
of course you would like to run the
simulation on
and kick things off then in the last
step you've get you could direct
feedback while you're simulation job is
running this one has been already
carried out you can see it took around
run about eight hours to compute and
that's sort of yeah just for you a
feeling for for how the the setup looks
like and what we'll do next is sort of
we'll save the entire simulation
analysis you know how you do post
processing and directly look at some
final results because we're running
short on time here what you'll get out
of a simulation result in sim scale out
of such an analysis is you've get all
the result values meaning temperatures
velocities pressures turbulent
quantities and in all you know within
the solids and within their within your
fluid regions obviously velocity and
pressure only in the interfere regions
and this is now a animation of a slice
view through starting from the fans you
can see you here in the top left we have
the two fans right bringing in bringing
in fresh air and then how this slides
moved through right and we can see now
on each and each slice how the velocity
looks like right a bit further down so
we can see that it's going through the
channels being formed by these buddies
for PCB boards down here through the
heatsink and then leaving again through
the slots here at the bottom right it
gives you a qualitative feeling for how
the air movement in here looks like and
then similarly that way right so we can
see this is again it says it's a color
coding of this initial of this initial
setup that we wanted to look like I
wanted to look at so we can see already
aha see at the at the at the very back
here we have not a lot of movement down
here I mean we can also see that let me
quickly draw something and it's going to
be important in a second we can also see
that here we have some some blue areas
when not a lot of air movement is going
on right
we can see in a second what's gonna
happen there here it's actually okay
right here looks okay but we can already
get a feeling for how our air moves
through this through this enclosure
let me quickly erase that all right just
finishing up this video all right
and now digging a bit deeper into this
this is now a cut section of this
initial setup of the initial fan choice
right intuitively we said hey that's the
fan we normally take so let's just use
that one on the Left we can see velocity
color-coding here and as I just already
had highlighted here we can see we've
got blue stuff going on here right so we
see that there's some there's some there
might be some insufficient coating over
here we'll see in a second right we've
got lots of blue stuff here but actually
we don't care because not a lot of heat
is being generated there also back here
there's not a lot of movement going on
but Megan we probably don't care because
we don't have you know a lot of a lot of
heat loss over there so that that might
be fine let's erase that and move on and
now here we put this velocity cut
section through the velocity field over
a temperature plot of the components and
there you immediately can see it right
we've got temperature being plotted at
60 degrees Celsius so red is 60 degrees
Celsius and so we said we want to shoot
for 50 right we can see that these that
the the capacitors here on the left are
actually fine so we're good here we're
green that looks okay but here on the
right we can see that due to the fact
that not a lot of air is going there
we've got low velocities there that
might be the reason for these guys to
heat up more than we would like them to
be removing the cut section of the
velocity and just looking at these
temperatures here we can see it very
clearly right that we've got some
semiconductors that heat up to high in
these regions
and that's something we might want to
take care of right another visualization
again highlighting it in in pretty
clearly right we've got not a lot of air
being moved there because of the the
larger components that's in front of it
leading to the fact that they are
convectively insufficiently cooled and
getting too hot by data that's what we
want to take care of right and that's
the next step right so what do you do
with simulation you use the insights and
without having built a prototype without
having invested any time into
manufacturing we're going to build a
prototype we can derive design decisions
to get you a better design and to make
this a very crisp demo you know and to
have to stick to the twenty minutes will
do it very simple right today we only
look at at different fan choices
customers are doing all sorts of things
right I could think about maybe moving
these components to another place where
there are better cooled or maybe
changing the fan placement up there etc
but we want to keep things very simple
and what we'll simply do is we're going
to use more fan different fans we're
going to use a a fan that moves more air
into the cabinet we're looking at the
exact same cabinet at the exact same PCB
board and we're just moving in more more
air so we're looking appoint three
meters 0.6 meters and then 1.0 m/s and
fan three so simply we're going to move
more air through it and we want to look
at the effects that this more air
movement has it at the temperature of
our semiconductors and that's what we've
done
so you basically run on sim scale the
same simulation three times with
different boundary conditions right so
the manual time here is is very low and
you're gonna get these results and so we
can see what we expect right same
velocity color coding knowing for all of
these three plots and so we can see
qualitatively the velocity field so
removing in air from the top right down
here the qualitatively the it looks very
similar and on the right we can see that
simply will push more air through so
let's take a look at this if this is now
sufficiently cool
and yes it is right simply by the fact
that we're moving more air through we
have more convective cooling happening
at these capacitors where we had
problems initially and concede that
we're going to get better lower
temperatures there so the fan 3 has
moved the temperatures the peak
temperatures of our semiconductors down
by a motor or by a roughly 20 percent
below the 50 degrees Celsius that we
shot for and that's basically one one
simulation ran with three different
boundary conditions gives you these
design in science right all of that done
in a web-browser so to sort of sum up
this quick 20 minute demo what we've
done is we've started with an intuitive
sort of the what we as an engineer would
say okay that's what we what we would
intuitively choose in terms of a fan
placement in terms of a component
placement and in terms of a fan
selection we run the analysis to find
out that our that some of our chips go
up to 60 degrees Celsius inside the
cabinet and let's assume in this design
scenario we wanted to shoot for below 50
and so we quickly iterated a bit further
in that case we've chosen other fans in
other scenarios we might have you know
chosen a different component placement
you name it and we run the analysis
again and see okay now we are
sufficiently cool that's that's a fan we
should probably go for overall the setup
of this since in same scale there's
quite some automation built into you
know automatic detection between between
interfaces there's lots of automatic
meshing being built in same skills so
the manual time is a couple of hours in
this case computing time you've seen it
it was north of 500 minutes and so the
computing time
I'm waiting for my simulation to be done
is roughly eight hours a little bit more
I can run all three simulations in
parallel because of it's a cloud-based
application and bottom line it was
roughly 400 core hours or we've used
write because we ran it on 16 core
machines
yeah and ultimately it's off the
benefits I'm getting is an engineer's or
that we see our customers getting is
that without going on to you know a
testing phase building a prototype you
said well you can just based on your CAD
data get the design insights you need to
move forward with confidence right and
that's ultimately oftentimes the case
why customers choose choose to use
simulation to wrap this up and I almost
got the 20 minutes to wrap this up don't
take my word for it right test it
yourself the beauty of sim skill is that
you can just sign up yourself and some
skill that come you can either get in
touch with us and we'll happy to give
you an individual demo and walk you
through into more detail but you can
also simply go with a community plan and
test it yourself right and give it a
spin yourself there's many public
projects around electronics components
electronics cooling all sorts of cooling
applications so make sure to check out
the public project and give it a spin
yourself and with that I say thank you
for the attention today and let's see if
there's some questions we should dig
into all right so there's probably too
many questions that we can cover in
today's sessions but are gonna are gonna
try to select the few of them that we at
least cover some of them so one one
registrant asks if the heat flux
definition is actually what per unit
volume for the component so there's
different ways how you can bring in a
heat flux definition and yes there's
also the option to to choose heat flux
per unit volume but in that case the it
was absolute an absolute value for the
what that is being applied to the to the
solid where you apply to but there's
many different ways I mean we've got
also customers today we looked at
electronics cooling
we've got also lots of customers that
are using similar
physics in for example in the HVAC
sector right and there's oftentimes
other boundary conditions or other types
of heat sources being used if there is a
particular way how you would like to
apply a heat flux let us know right
we're always looking for feedback and
see and learn about ways that we haven't
covered so let us know
so one user asks or one registered asks
the simulation took eight hours on sim
scale and I just wonder how on yeah how
long it would take with with another
simulation software um I mean it's hard
to answer that question I think you're
right it we you know it could I we were
we do run benchmarks but obviously not
exactly for that simulation so I don't
have any reference values there I think
the one unique thing about sim skill is
that you have free choice over the size
of the computer you want to use right so
this this simulation today I think we
carried it out on 16 course but there's
more there's larger instances also
available on sim scale so the beauty is
that you did a hardware sort of you have
unlimited access to hardware right and
you did you can just choose the Machine
you want but you're right if you would
lose another simulation software may on
a similar system you know it would come
down to a benchmark right which one is
faster
[Music]
there's so many more questions and I
would I couldn't find one that you know
we could answer in a quick in a quick
answer right now so what I would suggest
is I'll try to follow up on these
questions in a one-on-one setting and
for the ones you know that might have
still questions there's a really
encouraging we have a very active forum
on some scale so I'd encourage you to
I'm go to some scalar come slash forum
and take part in the discussion there
right at the same time feel free to
reach out to me directly my email
address you can see your in the on this
on this slide if you have a if you know
if you have an urgent question and if
I'm not able to answer the question and
I'll find an engineer here at since
cutter can so feel free to reach out so
with that I would wrap up this session
today again thank you so much for
joining and I'll hope to see you around
on the on the sim scale platform shortly
have a great day take care bye bye
you