Thermal characterization of compact electronic systems: a portable PC as a study case

Author

Dallago, Enrico ; Venchi, Giuseppe

Author_Institution

Power Electron. Lab., Pavia Univ., Italy

Volume

17

Issue

2

fYear

2002

fDate

3/1/2002 12:00:00 AM

Firstpage

187

Lastpage

195

Abstract

An analysis of the thermal behavior of compact electronic systems is presented. The chosen case study is a portable PC and the analysis is performed with an experimental and a numerical approach. The temperatures of the various parts of the system were measured by thermocouples under two different working conditions. Simulations used a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) solver. Issues involving the numerical prediction of operating temperatures are highlighted and discussed. In particular the importance of radiative exchange in the system is studied. A simple, yet effective model for the heat-pipe of the system considered is presented together with the procedure for tuning it. The influence of materials on the thermal behavior of the complete system is investigated by simulation. Considerations regarding the thermal aspects of compact electronic systems are also reported

Keywords

cooling; electronic engineering computing; heat pipes; heat radiation; notebook computers; thermal management (packaging); CFD; FLOTHERM; compact electronic systems; computational fluid dynamics; dissipated power; electronic cooling; heat pipe; notebook computer; portable PC; portable computer; radiative exchange; thermal behavior; thermal characterization; working conditions; Computational fluid dynamics; Computational modeling; Computer aided software engineering; Electronics cooling; Employee welfare; Fluid dynamics; Performance analysis; Power electronics; Power system modeling; Temperature;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Power Electronics, IEEE Transactions on

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

0885-8993

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/63.988829

Filename

988829