in a master’s thesis, hugo ljunggren falk, a student at kth school industrial engineering and management in sweden, examined the product development process of an infrared camera. the report noted that the streamlined process demanded by the need to reduce time to market forced engineers to proceed without thermal analysis in the design stages.

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while later cfd modeling, suing software that falk details in the report, was effective in determining whether or not a design would have thermal issues, falk explained that considering thermal management in the planning stages would have saved time and money for the company.

the abstract of the report, which can be read in full at http://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:971824/fulltext01.pdf, stated:

“progress in the miniaturization and performance in the development of electronic components along with the increased heat dissipation as a result of this, forces companies in the industry to streamline the product development and its thermal design procedures.

“the rapid development of electronical equipment requires the company to conduct detailed risk assessment and comprehensive design calculations to assure that the product’s reliability and requirements are up to thermal standard. to be able to keep up with the ever-changing technology with increased heat dissipation, companies need to incorporate an effective thermal design in their product development cycle.

“in this report, an outline is proposed to what a company with an already established product development cycle can do to include thermal thinking in their design of products. the project is carried out in correspondence with flir systems at whose facilities the project was conducted.

“the project goals were to present a thermal design process that the company could use as a guideline and later test this methodology on a product with known thermal challenges. in the background research, it was discovered that a few, yet simple, steps had to be taken to be able to effectively incorporate thermal design.

“this also included a selection of simulation software to simulate the product in different stages of the development cycle to assess the thermal situation. several softwares were analyzed and two were picked out for further analysis; flotherm xt and solidworks flow simulation.

“the results show that these software effectively could simulate a model with adequate accuracy to be used in decision-making, but could increase in accuracy if proper steps are taken before actual application.”

thermal management company, advanced thermal solutions, inc., recently addressed the issue of how important analytical modeling, using basic calculation of thermodynamics, could reduce time to market and be cost-effective, since it removes the need for over-designing a project.

read more from ats at http://www.qats.com/cms/2016/08/25/integral-modeling-is-first-step-for-ats-engineers.