High Heat Circuits—PCB Design for High-Temperature Applications

Focus:

A provider of printed circuit boards (PCBs) and related PCB services has provided this short introduction to board-level thermal management, particularly as it applies to PCBs that experience high temperatures either due to high ambients or the presence of high power density circuits. The mechanisms for heat dissipation—radiation, convection and conduction—and the associated thermal management (cooling) devices—heatsinks, fans, and pumps—are explained. This sets the stage for a short discussion of what can be done in PCB design to improve cooling. Namely, this section briefly describes the use of "heavy" or "extreme" copper layers, embedding of heavy copper wires, and the use of computational fluid dynamics (CFD) software. The article concludes by discussing the design-for-manufacturing and technical expertise that the PCB manufacturer can provide to a customer's product design and development team.

What you’ll learn:

• How to understand the mechanisms for thermal management at the board level
• How to understand the PCB-level options available for cooling circuits with high power density or high ambient temperatures

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Author & Publication:

no author specified, San Francisco Circuits, Vendor website, Feb 19 2014

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