Electronics warming and optimization study subject to low temperature environments

In the field of thermal management we must address the issue of cold soaked electronics that require to be heated up to operating temperature prior to start up. The thermal challenge is how to quickly raise the temperature of the unit by means of an electronic heater in order to reach the minimum recommended operating temperature. An important design consideration is the possibility of electronics overheating in the event of a failure that does not permit the heater to turn off. The art of the thermal management is to design an optimum heater size that can satisfy a rapid warm up requirement and yet not exceed the maximum allowable temperature in a failure mode scenario. An analytical model is developed to study the thermal management of such a system. The model is used to perform an optimization study and to recommend a heater controller design for a given specification.