Cooling system transient analysis using an electric circuit program analog

By exploiting the common mathematical similarities between electrical and thermal circuits, an electric circuit transient analysis program may be used to analyze the transient behavior of thermal circuits. This is an especially convenient approach for the analysis and optimization of the cooling performance of burst mode type electrical apparatus such as high power transmitters. The relations between electrical components and the equivalent thermal components are established such that given the thermal component characteristics, one may then write and electric circuit with the proper values and then run the model to determine the performance in electrical parameters that are then easily interpreted as thermal parameters. Similar techniques have been used for the thermal analysis of components such as semiconductor devices [A. R. Hefner and D. L. Blackburn, Thermal Component Models for Electro-Thermal Network Simulation] and analog hardware [X. Huang and H. A. Mantooth, June 2000]. In this paper the P-Spice/spl trade/ program is used as an example; however, the same procedures may be implemented using any electric circuit analysis program.