Category Archives: Thermal Science

Thermal Analysis embedded in your system: ATS kicks off embedded board Week

Well it’s a festive time here at Advanced Thermal Solutions, Inc. as we kick of Embedded Board Week here at ATS.

As many of our readers know, an embedded board is one that is basically inside another system.  The board is effectively a component within some other firms product. ATS’s embedded boards give OEMs the ability to use ATS’s proven technology for measuring air temperature, air velocity and air pressure in their systems.  Simply embedded one of our boards into your system and presto, you have usable ATS technology in your application.

Today we’ll talk about our lineup of embedded boards and during the week we’ll discuss applications. ATS has three primary embedded board types:

ISD embedded board for OEM ApplicationsISD: The ISD is an analog input,  PCB-based scanner for simultaneous, high speed measurements of air velocity and temperature from two independent sensors.

ATS ISD-232 embedded board ISD-232: The ISD is a digital input, PCB-based scanner for simultaneous, high speed measurements of air velocity and temperature from two independent sensors.

PTB-1000 OEM Embedded Board PTB-1000: The PTB-1000Pressure Transducer Board is a four-channel test board for measuring differential pressure where air flow integrity is critical to proper performance.

We’ll be writing about the many varied applications for these boards this week.  In the meantime, to get more information or to purchase these boards, click to our web page at qats.com, call us at 781-769-2800 or email us at sales.hq@qats.com.

Thermal Computations for Electronic Equipment by Gordon Ellison

At our webinar we broadcast today live from our studios here in Norwood, MA, “Analytical, Computational and Experimental Thermal Analysis of a xTCA Chassis” we mentioned Gordon Ellison as a resource for thermal modeling equations. We wanted to follow up with how to find his material.

Gordon’s book, “Thermal Computations for Electronic Equipment” can be purchased from Amazon.

You can also find an article written by Gordon on “Fan cooled enclosure analysis using a first order method” at Cooling Zone.

Microchannel blog post roundup – research and practice on microchannel technology for thermal management

There’s been a bit of talk on the internet about microchannels and their use in thermal management for electronics. As a service to our readers of ATS’ Thermal Blog we thought we’d put together a roundup of some of the microchannel coverage at Advanced Thermal Solutions and a few other sources just to help you have a single location to either renew your knowledge or bring you up to speed. This isn’t an exhaustive guide but more like a series of articles for overview:

  1. Microchannel Concepts and Recent Advances: An ATS Thermal Lab white paper from 2007 with good general information on the topic of microchannels
  2. Understanding how fluid boils in tiny microchannels gives engineers another tool to cool high-power electronics: A report on work being done at Purdue University on commercializing microchannels for thermal management
  3. The Thermal Peformance of Microchannel and Macrochannel Cold Plates: Covers the basics of the technology and thermal performance of microchannel and macrochannel cold plates.
  4. Direct Cooling of Power Modules by Using Micro-Channel Structures: an ATS Labs “how to” article: Microchannels can have a variety of applications, cooling power modules is one of them
  5. How to implement liquid cooling at the chip level: liquid cooled microchannel heat sinks to the rescue!: A technical article covering the “how to” on using microchannels in heat sinks.
  6. How to use silicon to create a cost effective and thermally effecient microchannel heat sink: How to create a cost effective and thermally efficient heat sink using microchannels

iTHERM 2010 Thermal Conference Bally’s, Las Vegas, NV, USA, June 2-5

iTherm, “an international conference for scientific and engineering exploration of thermal, thermomechanical and emerging technology issues associated with electronic devices, packages and systems” is being held June 2-5 at Bally’s, Las Vegas, NV, USA.

iTherm has a preliminary schedule up on their site here. There are MANY scheduled speakers, but a few to highlight include:

  • Scott Noteboom, Yahoo
  • Jesse Galloway, Amkor Technology
  • Maxat Touzelbaev, Advanced Micro Devices
  • Tomoyuki Hatakeyama, Toyama Prefectural University
  • Stanton Weaver, General Electric Company Global Research
  • Woo Young Kan, Samsung Electronics
  • Suresh V. Garimella, Purdue University
  • Robert Tozer, Hewlett Packard Critical Facilities Services
  • Darvin Edwards, Texas Instruments
  • Kripa Varanasi, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
  • David H. Altman, Raytheon Integrated Defense Systems

The list of seminars and panel topics runs 27 pages but here are a few:

  • Numerical Modeling of Data Center with Transient Boundary Conditions
  • Reducing Energy Usage in Data Centers through Control of Room Air Conditioning Units
  • From Chip to Cooling Tower Data Center Modeling: Part I Influence of Server Inlet Temperature and Temperature Rise across Cabinet
  • Heat Transfer Enhancement with Laminar Liquid-Gas Slug Flows
    Thermal Performance of Microchannels with Wavy Walls for Electronics Cooling
  • Numerical Study of aNovel Passive Micromixer Design
  • Open Side Car Heat Exchanger that Removes Entire Server Heat Load without any Added Fan Power
  • Comparison of 2D and 3D Unsteady Effects of a Pair of Opposed Confined Impinging Jets
  • Comparison between Experimental Results and CFD Simulations for Air Flows in a Thin Electronics Casing Model

See the full list and more at iTHERM 2010 Conference Page.

ATS Thermal Webinar April 15 2PM: Strategies in Cooling High Capacity/High End Systems

As the definition of what a high capacity/high end system is changes to accommodate the ever increasing needs for computer and storage resources, so do the thermal management challenges. Attendees of this webinar will learn about the strategies for cooling high capacity systems, including the use of liquid cooling.  Register for our free webinar at ATS’s webinar registration page here:
https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/905508427