coolingzone's econference series feature monthly online training taught by world class experts in thermal management and heat transfer.  each month two to three hours of important topics in thermal management, heat transfer, electronics cooling and thermal transport are provided for $99.00 for a month's sessions. these webinar format elearning courses fit well for engineers who need to review and update their skills or for those engineers moving into a new position. the $99.00 fee include an unlimited access to the recorded versions and the speaker notes (when provided by the speakers).  econference topics and speakers are in place for november and december:

topics for november 28, 2012  11am-1pm (est)

    dr. kaveh azar: "thermal design and characterization of flat miniature heat pipes"

micro & mini flat heat pipe (mmfhp) can be used at the base of a heat sink, coldplate  or on top of an electronic package to effectively disperse the heat over the entire available surface for cooling. therefore, they can become and attractive option for managing spreading resistance on low and high power chips when the solid is no longer adequate to address the problem. hence, thermal design and characterization of mmfhps requires special attention since up front design of these heat pipes play a major role not only in their thermal performance but also final cost of product. in this presentation design, manufacturing, characterization and modeling of mmfhps will be presented. salient issues such as the shape of the channels required to provide the best capillary and manufacturing challenges to fabricate them will be reviewed.

   jim vangilder: "fast 3d data center cooling analysis"

do you really need a traditional cfd package to design or manage your data center under all circumstances? are there any practical alternatives on the cooling-analysis spectrum between it and spreadsheet calculations by your in-house cooling guru? what are the consequences of unreliable input data for important geometric details and server power and airflow.  recently, alternatives to full cfd have been developed and discussed in the technical literature.  such tools can be used directly or incorporated within a more comprehensive data center design and management software package.  i will discuss these alternatives to full cfd with specific focus on potential flow modeling (pfm). 

   dr. andrew duggleby: "when is computer aided engineering more than just pretty pictures?"

can cfd really give us reliable results for our thermal engineering projects?  proper analysis of a heat transfer or thermal management problem requires all the components of proper analysis: analytical, computerational and physical. from this talk you will understand when relying on cfd is enough and when it is too much and what level of doubt and skepticism you need to have about those pretty pictures.

topics for december 12 (11am-2pm est)