{"id":1336,"date":"2013-01-10T18:11:08","date_gmt":"2013-01-10T22:11:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/coolingzone.com\/blog\/?p=1336"},"modified":"2018-03-17T19:11:48","modified_gmt":"2018-03-17T23:11:48","slug":"aavid-thermalloys-global-lab-network-connects-firms-with-best-in-class-thermal-analysis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.coolingzone.com\/blog\/2013\/01\/10\/aavid-thermalloys-global-lab-network-connects-firms-with-best-in-class-thermal-analysis\/","title":{"rendered":"Aavid Thermalloy’s Global Lab Network Connects Firms With Best in Class Thermal Analysis"},"content":{"rendered":"

coolingZONE (CZ) and Aavid’s Dr. Sukhvinder Kang (Dr. Kang) sat down to talk about Aavid’s worldwide network of thermal analysis laboratories<\/a>\u00a0 \u00a0 Aavid has labs in the US, Italy, China, Taiwan, and India and each one plays an important role in bringing\u00a0 to their customers the capability to test a heat transfer solution.\u00a0 coolingZONE has talked before about thermal analysis labs of course, most notably in our blog post, “How to Set Up a Lab for Electronics Cooling Thermal Engineering<\/a>“.\u00a0\u00a0 But what if such an undertaking is beyond a design teams means or core design mission or funding?\u00a0 Let’s cut to our interview with Dr. Kang to learn more:<\/p>\n

CZ:\u00a0 <\/strong>How did you set up your lab?\u00a0 Was it based on some experience you had with a big OEM or based on customers asking for certain kinds of testing?<\/p>\n

Dr. Kang:\u00a0 <\/strong>Well, our labs evolved based on two needs.\u00a0 One is helping our customers since we do service critical customers and the second is for our own internal R&D for products.\u00a0\u00a0 Those products address both current needs and future challenges so our lab needs to be current and well maintained in order to meet the current and future trends in the industry.<\/p>\n

CZ:\u00a0 <\/strong>So those two areas really drove your choices of the lab and the equipment in the lab as well?<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Dr. Kang:\u00a0 <\/strong>Yes, so we can test things like air cooling, board level cooling, liquid cold plates, heat pipes, various heat sinks and more.\u00a0 Also, as you well know, over time, the thermal resistance numbers engineers are targeting have become smaller and smaller and have driven more precision thermometry, better controls, and more active air flow and pressure drop measurement.\u00a0 The industry has become much more demanding and the cooling products have become much more capable.\u00a0 Indeed, we didn’t expect in the 1990’s that we could do the kinds of things we can do today with air cooling but we are.<\/p>\n

\"Picture1\"\u00a0 Aavid Thermalloy Test Setup<\/em><\/p>\n

CZ:\u00a0 <\/strong>Why and how did you choose the particular kind of lab equipment that you have?<\/p>\n

Dr. Kang: <\/strong>Just about everything in our lab is custom designed for our needs and I’d expect that would be true for most thermal labs.\u00a0 There is a need for data quality, precision, control of test conditions, and automation.\u00a0 Every test we do is automated.\u00a0 Of course items like sensors, data loggers, pumps and so on are off the shelf and selected for the range of flow rates, pressures, temperatures or sampling speed at which we want to acquire data.\u00a0 So these items are chosen and configured for our needs.<\/p>\n

And this mix of customization and off the shelf products is necessary because we have different labs around the world: Taiwan, China, Italy, India, and two in the United States.\u00a0 And they all started in response to very unique needs.\u00a0 The time, place and requirements were all different for each.\u00a0 Each lab’s equipment is somewhat unique to each lab given certain geographic needs.\u00a0 There are some common pieces like data acquisition, file systems, the way the data is managed and stored so that it facilitates collaboration between labs.<\/p>\n

But wind tunnels, or flow benches as I prefer to call them, are just a means to generate the flow and to meter it, plus a duct \u00a0where you can put your test set up in\u00a0 the flow.\u00a0 We designed and fabricated custom ones for our lab in Concord, NH. For our Taiwan lab we purchased one from LongWin<\/a> they make very good equipment.\u00a0 In Italy we custom designed a large wind tunnel for testing high power products and had it built to our specs. For our China lab we designed and manufactured a custom wind tunnel and in 2013 we will add another one like our large wind tunnel in Italy.\u00a0 In California we have a commercial unit we purchased.<\/p>\n

And then over time we’ve extended our labs\u2019 capabilities by adding liquid flow capability, heat pipe testing and dual phase testing. We develop our own specialized heat sources, thermal test vehicles, which include the thermometry right in the device.\u00a0 We have a record of the data we’ve collected from our TTV designs over time and can further improve the equipment.<\/p>\n

\"Picture2\"Aavid Thermalloy Test Setup<\/em><\/p>\n

CZ:<\/strong>\u00a0 Are there any particular protocols that Aavid uses in their lab that allows for accurate testing and analysis?<\/p>\n

Dr. Kang:<\/strong>\u00a0 We have an Aavid formal Test Request or TR Form.\u00a0 Every test in the lab has to have a TR attached to it.\u00a0 The TR is a means for the engineer who is requesting the test to specify as accurately as he knows, the specific test parameters and test setup.\u00a0 This could include the orientation of the device being tested, the flow rate, power levels and any other attribute an engineer can specify ahead of time.\u00a0 We are flexible in our test parameters, so in the case of a heat pipe, we can test in a wide range of orientations given the often unique shapes and bends they have.\u00a0 We quantify the variables that affect performance. We test permeability and capillary pressure in the pipes and a variety of other tests.\u00a0 An engineer can specify a wide range of test variables.\u00a0 Then the technician who is executing the test, they execute the TR based on very standard and uniform procedures that Aavid rigidly enforces.\u00a0 Each test has a wide range of flexible parameters but the execution is done in a standard way to build in a consistent test method and data collection.\u00a0 We want it to be easily replicatable across our lab network as necessary.<\/p>\n

Aavid also has at every major lab one or more “golden samples” for all the standard tests.\u00a0 This allows Aavid to periodically test whether the instruments have become uncalibrated.\u00a0 We put the same part on 6-months later and we want to see a data point that is within +\/-2% or 3% of the original measurement.\u00a0 If we don’t see that, we know that something has changed in the instrument.\u00a0 For example, in a flow bench a common thing is that someone forgot to close all the leaks based on the last test setup. Also we calibrate our instruments once a year and everything is traceable so none of the instruments are out of calibration when they are in use.<\/p>\n

CZ:\u00a0 <\/strong>Let me ask you about cold plates and heat pipes.\u00a0 That’s really the interim step that engineers may choose when they can’t get the thermal performance they need out of air.\u00a0 In the context of testing in your labs, do you find your customer’s looking for test capability for cold plates and heat pipes?<\/p>\n

Dr. Kang:<\/strong>\u00a0 Well, we are manufacturing a huge number of products that incorporate heat pipes. The thing about heat pipes is that no two heat pipes are the same.\u00a0 Each is unique.\u00a0 As part of the design process for our heat pipes, we test the heat pipes and the heat sink assemblies, we do a statistical distribution of the performance you can expect, the minimum performance you can expect in the heat pipe etc. We are particularly sensitive to include information on how much power the heat pipe can carry.\u00a0 In every application it has to be able to carry “x” number of watts. And you have to insure it will carry this wattage otherwise you will have local dry out or certainly excess temperature beyond an application\u2019s specification.<\/p>\n

With liquid cooling, we have engineered and manufactured a wide variety of cold plates.\u00a0 Beginning with very simple tube type cold plates. Our customers\u2019 want data on even these simple cold plates, such as performance at different GPM and with different fluid types.\u00a0 Our labs are setup to do that. Our work doesn’t stop with simple cold plates though; it also includes different internal structures, fins, channels, micro-channels and more.\u00a0 Regardless of how simple or complex, the data is very important.<\/p>\n

A customer’s application needs a certain thermal resistance or some characteristics and we need to demonstrate and deliver that.\u00a0 When you have a heat sink like an extrusion, which is a stable quantity of aluminum, once you have geometry you are done.\u00a0 Unless you change something like an alloy, add heat pipes, or make a heat sink with soldered joints, which then becomes part of the thermal path, then the quality control requires more diligence, including performance testing.\u00a0 Designers and manufacturers must be able to verify the product meets the specification for the application.\u00a0 In our process, we test 100% of the early stage products coming out of our factories.\u00a0 Our testing in these cases isn’t factory floor testing but full testing in our thermal R&D labs. The test process we have insures the design is stable and meets the thermal requirements of the application.\u00a0\u00a0 We’ll test the first few lots in this way.\u00a0 In some cases where volume of production or technology really requires it, we’ll develop a custom test process and equipment set up right in the production factory itself. That way our teams in the factory can collect data to insure specification compliance.<\/p>\n

\"Picture3\"<\/p>\n

Aavid Thermalloy Test Setup<\/em><\/p>\n

CZ:\u00a0 <\/strong>Did you find that as a global company that you needed to set up a global network of labs for that purpose, to meet your customer’s requirements in their different geographies, or did you do that in order to spread out the investment in labs across all the geographies?<\/p>\n

Dr. Kang:\u00a0 <\/strong>Our lab investment strategy is really to put labs in geographies that best support local companies, global companies and Aavid manufacturing around the world. So we have multiple goals we try to meet.<\/p>\n

CZ:\u00a0 <\/strong>Is it relatively easy for a company to do their initial developmental and prototype work at a local manufacturing company, thermally characterize it at an Aavid local lab, then transfer that test methodology accurately to a high volume location?\u00a0 Are the protocols transferrable giving customers the ability to prototype locally and once a product is stable ship it to high volume?<\/p>\n

Dr. Kang:\u00a0 <\/strong>Absolutely and this is a very common request.\u00a0 Most of the time Aavid is part of the customer’s engineering team on the thermal system development.\u00a0 Our job in some of these cases is to provide design for manufacturability input but many times it is helping to define system architecture and consider carefully what kind of thermal management design can be applied, within the constraints of the overall system design.\u00a0 And then there are other projects where a customer has designed a heat sink or other thermal management solution and they need our expertise to validate its function.\u00a0 Different customers have different levels of requirements.\u00a0 Some understand such thermal characterization is valuable but they don’t have a budget for it while other firms understand it and have money and people set aside to do it.<\/p>\n

CZ:\u00a0 <\/strong>You bring up an interesting point about your laboratories and this whole point that some firms may not understand the value of doing thermal characterization even though they might acknowledge it as necessary.\u00a0 Is that something you’ve seen in your work?<\/p>\n

Dr. Kang:\u00a0 <\/strong>The firms that come to us from a design services perspective always understand that they’ve got a problem.\u00a0 For them, having data that proves the solution we will deliver actually solves the original problem and is very important.\u00a0 The further verification that the prototype solution works in production is always seen by these types of firms as vital to their product’s success.\u00a0 With other firms there is more of a bi-directional education as to why thermal characterization and testing is important.\u00a0 Our team gets educated on the cost, performance and timeline goals the customer has which are critical for us having a successful joint development.\u00a0 On occasion, we have to educate the customer on why certain design approaches or tests matter.\u00a0 We have to show them why they may need to change their development schedule slightly to accommodate their particular thermal solution.\u00a0 The ultimate goal of this of course is to have the right thermal management solution for the application which leads to a successful product design.<\/p>\n

CZ: <\/strong>What did Aavid do right in setting up their labs and what would Aavid do differently if you had to set up your labs from scratch again?<\/p>\n

Dr. Kang:\u00a0 <\/strong>Well, let me start with what we did right. The way I can answer that question is that our labs are very effective for the types of tests we conduct and they are very flexible for research and to find the answers to a wide variety of engineering questions.\u00a0 Sometimes questions we are researching do stretch the limits of our or any labs capability and we have to tap into our University network. For companies that develop commercial or even military products, our labs are very capable.\u00a0 In addition, we keep our equipment updated.\u00a0 Over the past 12 years we’ve replaced or upgraded most of the equipment in our worldwide lab network, and that cycle of keeping our labs up to date and refreshed regularly continues.\u00a0 What we did right was to stay current, was to keep up with market and customer needs.<\/p>\n

What we didn’t anticipate is the quantity of testing required by customers. Customers want design partners and for Aavid to be a good partner we have to keep verified “golden sample” parts, custom fixtures and certain specialized test apparatus that all makes a difference to a customer.\u00a0 But that takes physical space and here in hind-sight I’d have allotted more space to our labs layout.<\/p>\n

CZ:\u00a0 <\/strong>Dr. Kang, many thanks to you and Aavid for speaking with us today.\u00a0 As we reach the end of our interview, what have been the most interesting projects your team has worked on?\u00a0 Have you ever had to do thermal testing of a chicken coop?<\/p>\n

Dr. Kang:\u00a0 <\/strong>Well, no chicken coops!\u00a0 And unfortunately I can’t share any specific projects due to the proprietary nature of them. However I can say we’ve done a huge number of projects over the years.\u00a0 One in particular involved PC’s that were fanless, cooled only by natural convection, and that was a multi-year project.\u00a0 Our role was not just in testing and thermal characterization but in the overall system architecture since air flow was vital to system cooling. The biggest challenge in the design was the display tube, this was before LED.\u00a0 The volume of space taken up by the display tube posed a challenge to the airflow. So our work in specifying how the electronics were laid out, how the chassis was mechanically fashioned, and the x, y, and z dimensions of the populated PCB were all critical factors in our successfully executing this project. We’ve worked on telecommunications switches and routers and early 1U servers where the size made electronics cooling pretty tough.\u00a0 1U designs today are better overall at dealing with thermal management requirements.\u00a0 We have also done very interesting projects on very high end liquid cooling systems, both single phase and dual phase.\u00a0 We’ve even done a project involving sonic nozzles to manage airflow.\u00a0\u00a0 The result of all this work is our teams have a very wide range of experience across a variety of technologies.\u00a0 This kind of experience gives Aavid the kind of depth and breadth of capability that makes us a valuable partner to firms who might not be able to invest in a thermal lab and the personnel to use it most effectively.\u00a0 In some sense our labs with our teams are a toolbox and we use heat transfer and fluid dynamics principles to solve many different kinds of thermal management problems.\u00a0 These aren’t just off the shelf solutions but the application of heat transfer fundamentals to bring solutions to bear and that is very powerful.\u00a0 And that is the strength of Aavid’s thermal labs