mentor, a siemens business, announced its winners for the inaugural annual flotherm δt_j award for excellence in electronics thermal design.

for over 30 years, the flotherm solution has been the de facto computational fluid dynamics (cfd) solution for electronics cooling. the flotherm product provides tight connectivity with electronic design automation (eda) and mechanical design automation (mda) development process flows, and is used to predict airflow, temperature, and heat transfer in components, boards, and complete systems.

flotherm δt_j award winners were required to demonstrate an application using the flotherm technology (including flotherm xt, flotherm pcb or flotherm ic) to successfully address a design problem. this included a return on investment (roi) improvement due to quantifiable use of cfd technology.

the first-place award winner is the team from the institute of microelectronics (ime), agency of science, technology and research in singapore. the team comprising gong yue tang, yong han, boon long lau, xiaowu zhang, and daniel min woo rhee, received a trophy for their paper, development of a compact and efficient liquid cooling system with silicon micro-cooler for high-power microelectronic devices. the team also received a $1,000 (usd) amazon gift card, which they have donated to the singapore children's society.

"microchannel based liquid cooling and thermal management technology has been used to develop the compact and efficient cooling system for high power electronics systems," stated gong yue tang. "through the thermal modelling and simulations, flotherm has been demonstrated as a fast and cost-effective thermal design tool to evaluate and optimize the thermal performance of the liquid cooling system proposed in this study."

two runners-up were also selected. hugo ljunggren falk, kth school of industrial engineering and management in sweden received a $500 (usd) amazon.de gift card for his paper, thermal management in an ir-camera. and gabriel ciobanu from continental corporation in romania also received the same for his paper, co-written with boris marovicfrom mentor, entitled the fundamentals of improving pcb thermal design.

"used by thousands of engineers across the globe, flotherm is the award-winning cfd electronics cooling solution used by the world's leading companies," said roland feldhinkel, general manager of the mentor mechanical analysis division.

"this is our inaugural flotherm award competition and we are honored by the broad range of successful applications we received. congratulations to our 2017 winners, and we look forward to next year's competition."

for more information on the flotherm 2017 award winners, visit  https://www.mentor.com/products/mechanical/awards-publications/flotherm-award.