Convection Cooling of Circuit Boards
Application ID: 449
The suite of models examine the air cooling of circuit boards populated with multiple integrated circuits (ICs), which act as heat sources. Two possible cooling scenarios are depicted: vertically aligned boards using natural convection, and horizontal boards with forced convection (fan cooling). In this case, contributions caused by the induced (forced) flow of air dominate the cooling. To achieve high accuracy, the simulation models heat transport in combination with the fluid flow.
The example models the heat transfer of a circuit-board assembly using the Heat Transfer Module’s Conjugate Heat Transfer predefined multiphysics coupling. The modeled scenario is based on work published by A. Ortega.
This model example illustrates applications of this type that would nominally be built using the following products:
however, additional products may be required to completely define and model it. Furthermore, this example may also be defined and modeled using components from the following product combinations:
- COMSOL Multiphysics® and
- either the Battery Design Module, CFD Module, Chemical Reaction Engineering Module, Corrosion Module, Electrochemistry Module, Electrodeposition Module, Fuel Cell & Electrolyzer Module, Heat Transfer Module, Microfluidics Module, Plasma Module, Polymer Flow Module, Porous Media Flow Module, or Subsurface Flow Module
The combination of COMSOL® products required to model your application depends on several factors and may include boundary conditions, material properties, physics interfaces, and part libraries. Particular functionality may be common to several products. To determine the right combination of products for your modeling needs, review the Specification Chart and make use of a free evaluation license. The COMSOL Sales and Support teams are available for answering any questions you may have regarding this.