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    Natural Convection and Inclined Parallel Plates 

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    thermal
    Published on 19th May '12 12:03     Number of Views: 2026 
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    Natural convection has been used to cool electronics for ages. It is a simple and reliable method. The big drawback, of coarse, is that the cooling capacity is limited. All possible means to enhance natural convection are therefore more than welcome. This article is about one particular method, inclined parallel plates.

    My first encounter with this issue happened when I was trying to design a cooling system for active electronics mounted in radio masts. Fans were excluded for reliability reasons. The only realistic alternative was therefore natural convection. The equipment was enclosed in metal boxes that needed to be cooled from one side. Applying a wide but not very high heat sink could have solved the problem but horizontal structures are not considered esthetical in radio masts. A second restraint was therefore that the heat sink not could be made much wider than the mast itself.
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    The thermal interface problem 

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    thermal
    Published on 18th May '12 20:08     Number of Views: 1428 
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    A few years ago solving an interface problem was just a matter of applying thermal grease. Things are much more complicated today. Not at least because the heat fluxes are increasing. The large flora of commercially available interface materials is a good illustration of that. The interface problem has many facets and they can not all be brought up in this article. Fortunately, there are experts to consult. The purpose of this article is therefore not to be complete, nor profound. It is rather to present an overview that hopefully could help some readers to become better discussion partners when consulting the real experts.
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    Front-end Thermal Design 

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    thermal
    Published on 15th May '12 22:00     Number of Views: 1420 
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    The thermal design has from its early days and forward focused on the calculation accuracy problem. Great progresses have been made. The best methods nowadays have a quality beyond what is needed for most standard applications. The back side of the coin is that these methods require plenty of detailed inputs, which makes them poorly adjusted to the requirements in the early phases of a design process.

    This article will discuss several aspects of front and back end thermal design. It will also expose some front end methods that have been practised by the author for more than 10 years and still are competitive.
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