eaton, a leading global provider of comprehensive power quality and backup power management solutions, faced stiff design restrictions in producing a new rectifier module. the 3 kw unit was going to dissipate 300 w, and in order to achieve balanced three-phase currents, the units had to be mounted in multiples of three per 19-inch wide shelf. this meant the rectifier envelope had to shrink by at least 50% over the existing model.

geometry allowed little leeway in manipulating the electronics to enhance cooling. components had to be positioned in a predefined sequence and this limited the possible locations for heat sinks, vents and fans. to quickly scope the problem, eaton design engineers enlisted coolit thermal and flow analysis software to visually determine where hot spots would develop and rapidly explore numerous "what if" scenarios without expensive and time-consuming physical prototypes. using coolit, they designed a tiny, but highly effective heat sink with optimized fin spacing and pinpointed preferred fan and vent locations.

the electronics engineers who performed the thermal design had no formal cfd training. but coolit's ease-of-use, built-in tutorial and intuitive interface quickly helped them get up to speed. throughout the design process, daat's technical support offered ready assistance by email and telephone and it often proactively contacted the customer to make sure the project was proceeding smoothly.

once the coolit-based changes were implemented, the resulting design exceeded the dimensional goals. the new unit shrunk by 60%, enabling six units to fit within a 19-inch shelf.�

coolit-based design slashes rectifier size by more than half.