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All Thought Leadership
Robin Bornoff
The Boston Tea Party
May 16, 2025
Holiday themed simulation blogs are very de rigueur of late so I thought I’d jump on the bandwagon for both...
By Robin Bornoff
< 1
MIN READ
What’s the Fastest Way to Dry Your Hands? Simcenter FLOEFD Explains…
September 27, 2023
Find out the fastest way to dry your hands using insights gained from Simcenter FLOEFD.
By Robin Bornoff
< 1
MIN READ
How Cool is that? A 1D3D Approach to Simulating Liquid Cooling
November 3, 2020
The accuracy of 3D in a 1D Systems Simulation context. Breaking down barriers using 1D3D approaches.
By Robin Bornoff
< 1
MIN READ
Facebook Live Event on Tuesday July 11th – Frontloading CFD: How and Why?
July 5, 2017
Performing more thermo-fluids simulation, earlier in a product design process, will mitigate the risks of late stage redesign and the...
By Robin Bornoff
< 1
MIN READ
SEMI-THERM 33 – ‘A History of Commercial CFD’ Short Course
March 6, 2017
At this year’s SEMI-THERM symposium next week in San Jose, John Parry and I will be presenting a short course...
By Robin Bornoff
< 1
MIN READ
Talking CFD Podcast – Democratization, Appification and Strategy
December 21, 2016
I had the pleasure recently to talk with Robin Knowles as part of his Talking CFD podcast series. All credit...
By Robin Bornoff
< 1
MIN READ
A Novel Approach to Reducing Heatsink Mass Whilst Preserving Thermal Performance, using FloTHERM
May 23, 2016
Heatsinking is a common method to facilitate the removal of heat from a dissipating component, thus reducing source (junction) temperature....
By Robin Bornoff
< 1
MIN READ
Response Surface and Sequential Optimisation of a Heatsink Using FloTHERM. Part 6 – Response Surface Models
May 3, 2016
So far we’ve looked at a couple of ways to optimise the design of a heatsink to meet some quantified...
By Robin Bornoff
< 1
MIN READ
Response Surface and Sequential Optimisation of a Heatsink Using FloTHERM. Part 5 – Sequential Optimisation and Compound Cost Functions
March 1, 2016
Sequential optimisation is an alternative optimisation strategy that can be run in FloTHERM’s Command Center module. As with response surface...
By Robin Bornoff
< 1
MIN READ
Response Surface and Sequential Optimisation of a Heatsink Using FloTHERM. Part 4 – Response Surface Inspection
February 23, 2016
To recap… So far in this series we’ve: Taken a simple FloTHERM application of a component+heatsink placed on a PCB...
By Robin Bornoff
< 1
MIN READ
Response Surface and Sequential Optimisation of a Heatsink Using FloTHERM. Part 3 – Cost Function Response Surfaces
February 11, 2016
A design of experiments based study will provide a scatter gun type indication of how the system performs with a...
By Robin Bornoff
< 1
MIN READ
Happy Lunar New Year! – FloEFD Investigates Sky Lantern Aerodynamics
February 8, 2016
Happy Chinese new year, wishing you all prosperity, luck, health and fortune in this, the year of the Monkey! Also...
By Robin Bornoff
< 1
MIN READ
Response Surface and Sequential Optimisation of a Heatsink Using FloTHERM. Part 2 – Design of (Computational) Experiments
February 1, 2016
The most effective, but least efficient, method to determine an optimal combination of design parameters is to consider every single...
By Robin Bornoff
< 1
MIN READ
Response Surface and Sequential Optimisation of a Heatsink Using FloTHERM. Part 1 – Defining a Design Space
January 26, 2016
Heatsinks are a very common method of aiding the transfer of heat from a source (e.g. IC die) to a...
By Robin Bornoff
< 1
MIN READ
The Appification of CFD Simulation has Started
January 18, 2016
There has been much talk about the appification of established technologies. Discussion on the appification of high-value CAE simulation seems...
By Robin Bornoff
< 1
MIN READ
Room Temperature Metal Bonding – Heralding a Revolution In IC Performance and Reliability?
January 13, 2016
A reliable electronic product is generally a cool one. In addition, one of the main limiters of non-functional performance is...
By Robin Bornoff
< 1
MIN READ
Automated Model Calibration in FloTHERM – A Future Cornerstone of Simulation Based Workflows, Today
January 12, 2016
Available in the recently released FloTHERM V11.1 is the ability to calibrate a FloTHERM simulation model so that it matches...
By Robin Bornoff
< 1
MIN READ
Top 7 FloTHERM V11 Features – #5: Overlapping Localized Grid
November 30, 2015
A grid (mesh) defines a tessellated collection of small volumes that cover the 3D volume of space that is to...
By Robin Bornoff
< 1
MIN READ
Top 7 FloTHERM V11 Features – #4: FloMCAD Automation
November 27, 2015
Software can be described in two ways, what it does (functional) and how it does it (non-functional). As a software...
By Robin Bornoff
< 1
MIN READ
A FloEFD Halloween Horror Story
October 29, 2015
Picture the scene… The news channels had been reporting the disappearance of Simon Cary from the All Hallows Asylum for...
By Robin Bornoff
< 1
MIN READ
Can Cows Fly? Simcenter FLOEFD Investigates. Part 3 – Superbly Sonic
October 12, 2015
If air flows fast enough over something it can tend to lift itself up. Ask any child running with a...
By Robin Bornoff
< 1
MIN READ
Top 7 FloTHERM V11 Features – #3: FloMCAD’s New GUI
October 5, 2015
With FloTHERM V10 we embarked on a GUI replacement program to update the GUI and user experience for all of...
By Robin Bornoff
< 1
MIN READ
Top 7 FloTHERM V11 Features – #2: FloMCAD’s Voxelize
September 22, 2015
The simulation of MCAD geometry is a day to day requirement for the majority of thermal design engineers, especially those...
By Robin Bornoff
< 1
MIN READ
Can Cows Fly? Simcenter FLOEFD Investigates. Part 2 – Aerocownamic Lift and Drag
September 21, 2015
Well of course cows can’t fly, not udder their own volition anyway. As with any body placed in an air...
By Robin Bornoff
< 1
MIN READ
Can Cows Fly? Simcenter FLOEFD Investigates. Part 1 – Only in the Mooovies
September 17, 2015
It has been observed that cows tend to stand with their rumps facing the oncoming wind. There has been much...
By Robin Bornoff
< 1
MIN READ
Top 7 FloTHERM V11 Features – #1: Joule Heating
September 17, 2015
FloTHERM V11 is now released and contains a wealth of interesting and useful features. In this blog series I’ll select...
By Robin Bornoff
< 1
MIN READ
A Couple of Other Electronics Thermal Blogs…
September 7, 2015
Blogs are a great outlet if you are passionate about a subject. I’ve been running this blog on mentor.com for...
By Robin Bornoff
< 1
MIN READ
Organically Grown 3D Printable Heatsinks – Part 4: A Fully Automated Methodology
April 30, 2015
The additive design methodology itself is quite straightforward. It is however highly repetitive. Perform a simulation, identify a maximum temperature...
By Robin Bornoff
< 1
MIN READ
Organically Grown 3D Printable Heatsinks – Part 3: Smoothing the Edges
April 1, 2015
The shape of the small piece of geometry that is added so as to successively ‘relieve’ the design determines the...
By Robin Bornoff
< 1
MIN READ
Organically Grown 3D Printable Heatsinks – Part 2: Trunks and Branches
March 25, 2015
Adrian Bejan’s Constructal Law states: “For a finite-size system to persist in time (to live), it must evolve in such...
By Robin Bornoff
< 1
MIN READ
Organically Grown 3D Printable Heatsinks – Part 1: A Simple Iterative Procedure
March 24, 2015
This is what a typical extruded fin heatsink looks like. It’s made of metal and sits on top of IC...
By Robin Bornoff
< 1
MIN READ
The Electronics Cooling Metaphorical Drinking Game – Part Deux
March 9, 2015
With Semi-Therm 31 just a week away I thought it would be a good time to expand on the (metaphorical)...
By Robin Bornoff
< 1
MIN READ
Angry Building Melts Car with Focused Sunlight Weapon
March 5, 2015
29th August, 2012. A Jaguar XJ parked in Fenchurch Street, London, suffered melted panels between 1200 and 1400, owner Martin...
By Robin Bornoff
< 1
MIN READ
Mentor Graphics at Semi-Therm 31 – ‘Dolly the Heatsink’ and much more
March 2, 2015
Semi-Therm, the world’s largest dedicated electronics thermal conference, will take place between March 15-19 at the Doubletree Hotel in San...
By Robin Bornoff
< 1
MIN READ
Engineering Love
February 24, 2015
It’s National Engineer’s Week in the US this week. A similar event takes place in the UK in March. I’ve...
By Robin Bornoff
< 1
MIN READ
3D Thermal Simulation of 2D Images, a Valentine’s Love Story.
February 10, 2015
A full 3D thermal simulation of an electronic system requires, not surprisingly, a 3D geometric representation of the proposed design....
By Robin Bornoff
< 1
MIN READ
Domestic Hot Water Heating, ‘Wat-er’ Waste of Energy. Part 4: ‘Wat-er’ Waste of Time
January 21, 2015
Energy isn’t the only thing that is wasted when dealing with hot water supply. Time is as well. The house...
By Robin Bornoff
< 1
MIN READ
Domestic Hot Water Heating, ‘Wat-er’ Waste of Energy. Part 3: Cool-down
January 9, 2015
Horror vacui, Natura abhorret vacuum, Resintenza del vacuo; from Aristotle to Galileo, it has long been known that here on...
By Robin Bornoff
< 1
MIN READ
Domestic Hot Water Heating, ‘Wat-er’ Waste of Energy. Part 2: Warm-up
December 19, 2014
Sure, most modern homes have much more advanced water heating systems than a big tank with an electric heater element....
By Robin Bornoff
< 1
MIN READ
Domestic Hot Water Heating, ‘Wat-er’ Waste of Energy. Part 1: Pun Intended
December 15, 2014
Human technical prowess relies heavily on the conversion of energy from one form to another, to meet our needs. Physiological...
By Robin Bornoff
< 1
MIN READ
If You’re Going to Lose it, You Might as Well Use it!
November 25, 2014
A lot of engineering involves the management of energies, converting them from one form to another, channeling off useful work...
By Robin Bornoff
< 1
MIN READ
Thermal Bottlenecks. This is Hot, This is Why.
October 28, 2014
The term ‘thermal bottleneck’ is widely recognized, drawing from an intuitive analogy: a bottleneck restricts flow, making it harder for...
By Robin Bornoff
< 1
MIN READ
Blue LEDs. Since When is Improvement Invention?
October 21, 2014
Lighting accounts for ~20% of the world’s total energy consumption. This is a staggering statistic. Why so much? Historically a...
By Robin Bornoff
< 1
MIN READ
Leg Hair? What a Drag
October 6, 2014
“How thick is a leg hair” is not a question I thought I’d be posing when I woke up today....
By Robin Bornoff
< 1
MIN READ
The Electronics Cooling Metaphorical Drinking Game
October 1, 2014
There are a handful of quoted and re-quoted drivers, concepts and technologies in the electronics cooling industry. Be it a...
By Robin Bornoff
< 1
MIN READ
Xilinx Patent for Critical Tj Prediction
September 19, 2014
A recently issued patent describes a process by which the critical IC temperature (junction temperature, Tj) can be determined in...
By Robin Bornoff
< 1
MIN READ
Dell Precision – Spot on Thermal Design
September 8, 2014
Develop 3D is a UK based Magazine and Website focussing on the technologies involved in product design. The latest copy...
By Robin Bornoff
< 1
MIN READ
Top 10 FloTHERM V10 Features – #11: Odds and Sods
September 4, 2014
A release so good it has 11 best top 10 features, very Spinal Tap. I thought I’d wrap up this...
By Robin Bornoff
< 1
MIN READ
Top 10 FloTHERM V10 Features – #10: Improved Solar Calculator
September 4, 2014
Arguably the most important (and often least well characterised) parameter controlling the temperature of electronic products is their power dissipation....
By Robin Bornoff
< 1
MIN READ
Top 10 FloTHERM V10 Features – #9: Data Center Simulation
September 4, 2014
FloVENT, FloTHERM’s sister product aimed at 3D CFD simulation of the built environment, has for many years been able to...
By Robin Bornoff
< 1
MIN READ
Top 10 FloTHERM V10 Features – #8: Thermostatic Control with Hysteresis
August 29, 2014
Electronics thermal simulation historically focussed on steady state conditions, worse case scenarios where for example a power dissipation is assumed...
By Robin Bornoff
< 1
MIN READ
Top 10 FloTHERM V10 Features – #7: Super-fast Parallel CFD Solver
July 18, 2014
I’m sure in the (far) future, product design and manufacture will just involve a big box that you can ask...
By Robin Bornoff
< 1
MIN READ
Top 10 FloTHERM V10 Features – #6: Integrated Summary Columns
June 30, 2014
If there’s one word that describes electronics products it’s ‘complexity’. Actually, scratch that, that’s too generic a term. How about...
By Robin Bornoff
< 1
MIN READ
Top 10 FloTHERM V10 Features – #5: FloSCRIPT
June 10, 2014
Flo. As far as prefixes go, I don’t know of another company that uses one so consistently for product branding,...
By Robin Bornoff
< 1
MIN READ
Top 10 FloTHERM V10 Features – #4: Updated CAD
June 4, 2014
FloTHERM’s strength has always its been its robustness, founded on a simplicity of technology that we’ve tried not to compromise...
By Robin Bornoff
< 1
MIN READ
Top 10 FloTHERM V10 Features – #3: FEA Interfacing
June 3, 2014
Temperature has always been, and will continue to be, a good enough leading indicator of product reliability. As a parameter...
By Robin Bornoff
< 1
MIN READ
Top 10 FloTHERM V10 Features – #2: Advanced Find
February 25, 2014
Electronic products, and products that contain electronics, are typified by being constructed of 100s if not 1000s of individual parts....
By Robin Bornoff
< 1
MIN READ
Top 10 FloTHERM V10 Features – #1: New GUI
February 14, 2014
FloTHERM V10 is a major release that marks 25 years as the leading electronics thermal simulation tool. This series will...
By Robin Bornoff
< 1
MIN READ
Come and Learn about the Latest Release of FloTHERM, V10
January 15, 2014
The latest release of FloTHERM, V10, is now available! It is a major release, satisfying over 40 software enhancement requests...
By Robin Bornoff
< 1
MIN READ
Heat Your Home Office for 8p (10cents) a Day. Part 5 – Putting it All Together
January 10, 2014
3D computational simulation is still a relatively young technology in the grand scheme of things, akin to the automotive industry...
By Robin Bornoff
< 1
MIN READ
Heat Your Home Office for 8p (10cents) a Day. Part 4 – Comfort Temperature
December 18, 2013
Have you ever wondered why, after a cold winter’s night, some of your car windows are iced over whilst others...
By Robin Bornoff
< 1
MIN READ
Heat Your Home Office for 8p (10cents) a Day. Part 3a – Was Dave Right?
December 9, 2013
It’s always nice to get some comments on your blog. When starting writing blogs about 4 years ago (2022 edit:...
By Robin Bornoff
< 1
MIN READ
Heat Your Home Office for 8p (10cents) a Day. Part 3 – It Takes Time
November 27, 2013
Dylan in his original YouTube video made the point that the tea lights only burn for about 4 hours and...
By Robin Bornoff
< 1
MIN READ
Heat Your Home Office for 8p (10cents) a Day. Part 2 – Thermal Interception
November 19, 2013
We often do things that we intuitively feel are beneficial, often without realising just why. One of the beauties of...
By Robin Bornoff
< 1
MIN READ
Heat Your Home Office for 8p (10cents) a Day. Part 1 – Really?
November 18, 2013
Dylan Winter, boat owner, film maker and blogger, made a youtube video about a year ago (2022 edit: now removed as...
By Robin Bornoff
< 1
MIN READ
Happy 25th Birthday FloTHERM !
November 14, 2013
Late in 1988 two key employees of CHAM (Concentration Heat And Momentum Ltd.), the first commercial CFD vendor and at...
By Robin Bornoff
< 1
MIN READ
Why Not Just Shove a Heatsink on Top of it? Part 3: Pads, Vias and Undersinking
July 5, 2013
An appreciation of heat flow paths is a pre-requisite for good thermal design. If you attempt to augment heat flow...
By Robin Bornoff
< 1
MIN READ
Why Not Just Shove a Heatsink on Top of it? Part 2: Heat Flow Budgets
May 15, 2013
Two different package styles, two very different thermal responses when a extruded plate fin heatsink is placed on each. At...
By Robin Bornoff
< 1
MIN READ
Why Not Just Shove a Heatsink on Top of it? Part 1
May 13, 2013
A common enough question. Heatsinks are often perceived to be the magic answer to all electronics cooling challenges. They should...
By Robin Bornoff
< 1
MIN READ
Experiment vs. Simulation, Part 5: Detailed IC Package Model Calibration Methodology
April 19, 2013
In the royal family of thermal IC package modelling types, a detailed model is King. All critical 3D geometry is...
By Robin Bornoff
< 1
MIN READ
CFD – Colourful Friday Distractions
April 5, 2013
By way of an apology for the more verbose blogs I’ve been issuing recently I’d like to present you with...
By Robin Bornoff
< 1
MIN READ
Experiment vs. Simulation, Part 4: Compact Thermal Models
April 5, 2013
Electronics cooling simulation was born out of the world of CFD, rather fully conjugate heat transfer simulation where convective, radiative...
By Robin Bornoff
< 1
MIN READ
Experiment vs. Simulation, Part 3: JESD51-14
February 22, 2013
The JESD51-14 standard was published in November 2010, prepared by the JEDEC JC-15 Committee on Thermal Characterization. It outlines a...
By Robin Bornoff
< 1
MIN READ
Experiment vs. Simulation, Part 2: TIM Thermal Conductivity
January 25, 2013
The temperature rise that electronic components attain in operation is due to 3 things. The power that they dissipate, the...
By Robin Bornoff
< 1
MIN READ
Experiment vs. Simulation, Part 1: Them and Us.
January 18, 2013
Before you sell it, or commission it, you want to be sure that it works. Monies have been spent on...
By Robin Bornoff
< 1
MIN READ
“Why Cartesian Grids Are Good”
September 27, 2012
I put the title in quotes as it’s the title of a blog post by John Chawner at Pointwise who...
By Robin Bornoff
< 1
MIN READ
Where’s the Best Place to Put a Radiator in a Room? Part 5: Get a Job
August 16, 2012
Effective use of a Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulation tool requires at least a working knowledge of fluid dynamics itself....
By Robin Bornoff
< 1
MIN READ
Where’s the Best Place to Put a Radiator in a Room? Part 4: Premature Simulation
August 9, 2012
One thing the Mechanical Analysis Division is not guilty of is vendor hubris. Despite the passion we have about our...
By Robin Bornoff
< 1
MIN READ
Where’s the Best Place to Put a Radiator in a Room? Part 3: 13% Better
July 31, 2012
Conventional wisdom has it that the best place to put a radiator in a room is under the window. However,...
By Robin Bornoff
< 1
MIN READ
Where’s the Best Place to Put a Radiator in a Room? Part 2: PMV and other TLAs
July 26, 2012
Sometime between 40 and 100 thousand years ago humans started to wear clothes, an estimate as accurate as you’d expect...
By Robin Bornoff
< 1
MIN READ
Where’s the Best Place to Put a Radiator in a Room. Part 1: Such Things are Important
July 12, 2012
With the gulf stream having shifted south and now flowing happily somewhere high over Paris, the summer weather in the...
By Robin Bornoff
< 1
MIN READ
Agile software development practices in the Mechanical Analysis Division
May 11, 2012
From a software user’s perspective it really doesn’t matter exactly how that application was developed. A user is concerned with...
By Robin Bornoff
< 1
MIN READ
A Little Goes A Long Way (But A Lot Doesn’t Go Much Further)
May 3, 2012
It has been almost 3 years since I started this blog and I hope you’ve found it as interesting as...
By Robin Bornoff
< 1
MIN READ
More Than Two Decades and Still Going Strong; FloTHERM and FloVENT V9.3 Now Released
April 17, 2012
In 1989 Flomerics was the first organisation to provide application specific CFD based simulation software where all pre and post-processing...
By Robin Bornoff
< 1
MIN READ
Simulation Software So Simple Even Teenagers Can Use It
April 4, 2012
The UK government has a policy for all year 10 or year 11 students to undertake a week’s work experience....
By Robin Bornoff
< 1
MIN READ
Bottlenecks and Interface Materials; Part 3 – Relieving Thermal Bottlenecks Reduce Temperatures
February 10, 2012
As with all good inventions, you quickly wonder how on earth you could have done without them before. Relieving thermal...
By Robin Bornoff
< 1
MIN READ
Bottlenecks and Interface Materials; Part 2 – When TIMs Go Bad
January 30, 2012
‘Bits stuck onto other bits’, a succinct definition of an electronic product, if not a product that contains electronics. Soldering...
By Robin Bornoff
< 1
MIN READ
Bridging the Simulation Supply Chain; NXP Semiconductors, a Case in Point
January 22, 2012
By far and away the most common enquiry by someone using FloTHERM, especially at the start of their adoption, is...
By Robin Bornoff
< 1
MIN READ
Bottlenecks and Interface Materials; Part 1 – Great Thermal Bedfellows
January 18, 2012
Probably due to the beer fridge, I now seem to be becoming the repository of broken electronic products with an...
By Robin Bornoff
< 1
MIN READ
Emails, more Emails and Jeff Bridges
January 9, 2012
It’s estimated that, from a figure of 0.4% in 1995, now about 30% of the world’s population are ‘internet users’....
By Robin Bornoff
< 1
MIN READ
LEDs; The future’s bright and hot.
January 3, 2012
LED based lighting is now a very hot topic (believe me, in electronic thermal management circles that used to be...
By Robin Bornoff
< 1
MIN READ
From Megawatts to Milliwatts; sub-micron scale thermal modelling with FloTHERM
December 23, 2011
Joseph Fourier led a full and interesting life. Apart from his obvious legacy of Fourier’s Law that relates the temperature...
By Robin Bornoff
< 1
MIN READ
What! All that just for that? The bonkers world of CPU cooling.
November 17, 2011
My colleague Ed and I were marvelling the other day at the CPU cooling unit from one of our training...
By Robin Bornoff
< 1
MIN READ
Ho, Ho, Ho! Facebook moves to Lapland
October 28, 2011
What do you call someone who doesn’t believe in Father Christmas? A rebel without a Claus. Right, that’s that out...
By Robin Bornoff
< 1
MIN READ
All Detailed Thermal IC Package Models are Wrong… Probably
October 20, 2011
‘Rubbish In -> Rubbish Out’ is a well accepted fact in the world of simulation. Regardless of the technical capabilities...
By Robin Bornoff
< 1
MIN READ
Underfloor Electric Heating. Part III – Penny wise, pound foolish.
October 18, 2011
It would only have cost me an extra £170, a small extra compared to the cost of the rest of...
By Robin Bornoff
< 1
MIN READ
Underfloor Electric Heating. Part II – Infrared Thermography
August 19, 2011
3D simulation can provide a detailed prediction of temperature and heat flux values at 10s of 1000s of points in...
By Robin Bornoff
< 1
MIN READ
Underfloor Electric Heating. Part I: In by Christmas
August 11, 2011
It’s been over two years since the foundations went in for the extension we’re building on our house. In that...
By Robin Bornoff
< 1
MIN READ
Come, meet FloTHERM/VENT/EFD users, learn and enjoy!
June 28, 2011
As a FloTHERM, FloVENT or FloEFD user you might not realise it but you are part of a global and...
By Robin Bornoff
< 1
MIN READ
PC Overclocking and Aftermarket Modding. Part III – Power vs. Frequency?
June 13, 2011
Thermal simulation of electronic systems using FloTHERM usually involve the definition of the 3D geometry and relevant material properties, specification...
By Robin Bornoff
< 1
MIN READ
PC Overclocking and Aftermarket Modding. Part II – Liquid Nitrogen Overclocking, How Cool is That?
June 6, 2011
I’m a big fan of product demonstrations. Having once been an application engineer, there’s nothing quite like the thrill of...
By Robin Bornoff
< 1
MIN READ
PC Overclocking and Aftermarket Modding. Part 1 – When Colour Matters.
May 24, 2011
Automotive aftermarket modification has both mass appeal and a multi-million dollar turnover. Neon underbody lighting, enhanced radiator systems, aero-dynamic side...
By Robin Bornoff
< 1
MIN READ
Desktop PC with Integrated Toaster – As if!
April 8, 2011
OK, so it won’t go down in the annals of history as the best April fools ever but it had...
By Robin Bornoff
< 1
MIN READ
Thermal Design Perfection Starts with the use of FloTHERM PACK
April 8, 2011
‘Plagiarism saves time’ as can be seen in the title of this blog, a nod to Tom Hausherr’s excellent blog...
By Robin Bornoff
< 1
MIN READ
We Love FloTHERM V9.2
April 7, 2011
FloTHERM, and its sister product FloVENT, have been going since 1989. Many in the Mechanical Analysis Division in Mentor have...
By Robin Bornoff
< 1
MIN READ
Desktop PC with Integrated Toaster – the Future is Now
April 1, 2011
The convergence of technology platforms continues apace, especially in the mobile telephony world. The world of overclockers and case modders...
By Robin Bornoff
< 1
MIN READ
Do you know the way to San Jose?
March 18, 2011
One of the highlights of the electronics thermal management calender is the annual SEMI-THERM symposium held in sunny San Jose,...
By Robin Bornoff
< 1
MIN READ
Beer Fridge – A Case Study in Thermal Design. Part 6 – Baffles and Bottlenecks
February 14, 2011
For a blog series focused on thermal design there has been precious little design presented so far. Design is the...
By Robin Bornoff
< 1
MIN READ
FloEFD HVAC Module – Taking Built Environment CFD Simulation to the Next Level
January 31, 2011
The recently released FloEFD HVAC Module brings a raft of features specifically tailored to enable FloEFD to be used for...
By Robin Bornoff
< 1
MIN READ
Beer Fridge – A Case Study in Thermal Design. Part 5 – Time for a FloBEER
January 27, 2011
All good things come to those who wait. For beer this entails a trade off between anticipation and satisfaction. If,...
By Robin Bornoff
< 1
MIN READ
Beer Fridge – A Case Study in Thermal Design. Part 4 – FloBEER
January 7, 2011
As the ancient proverb goes; a beer fridge without beer is like X Factor, utterly pointless. You’d have thought that...
By Robin Bornoff
< 1
MIN READ
Beer Fridge – A Case Study in Thermal Design. Part 3 – Side Up or Upside Down?
January 4, 2011
The futility of investigating the cooling effectiveness of any empty fridge is beginning to dawn on me, the irony of...
By Robin Bornoff
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Beer Fridge – A Case Study in Thermal Design. Part 2 – TEC Effect
December 21, 2010
Beer drinkers are notoriously quiet people and as such would not want to be disturbed by the continuous hissing and...
By Robin Bornoff
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Beer Fridge – A Case Study in Thermal Design. Part 1 – A Gift
November 26, 2010
My boss, Roland, relocated from Germany to the UK a couple of years ago and has taken to life in...
By Robin Bornoff
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What Can You Learn When You Turn It On?
November 19, 2010
Power on an IC package, measure the resulting transient response of the junction temperature and from that infer a wealth...
By Robin Bornoff
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We Love FloTHERM – 8 Reasons to Upgrade to V9.1
November 5, 2010
Here at the Mechanical Analysis Department we love FloTHERM and we love developing FloTHERM to ensure it keeps up with...
By Robin Bornoff
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On the Vilification of Smokers
October 29, 2010
On a recent trip to Japan I was surprised to find out how much their attitudes to smoking had changed....
By Robin Bornoff
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Identifying Thermal Bottlenecks and Shortcut Opportunities – Taking Simulation to the Next Level
October 27, 2010
Simulation has, to date, focused primarily on the prediction of an operating state that is compared to a design acceptable...
By Robin Bornoff
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How many frogs does a horse have?
August 10, 2010
The internet is big. It’s not sentient yet, though Robert Swayer has written a compelling story of how it might...
By Robin Bornoff
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It’s a wireless world! No it isn’t.
August 4, 2010
The sheer amount of innovation and discovery regarding electrical and electro-magnetic behaviour in the 19th century is staggering. From Volta’s electrical cell...
By Robin Bornoff
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Are you using ‘Smart’ in a way I am not familiar with?
July 28, 2010
Phones are now smart apparently. This has come as quite a shock and one that I’m still trying to reconcile...
By Robin Bornoff
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An Interview With… Clemens Lasance
July 27, 2010
Every industry or industry sub-sector has its movers and shakers, its pioneers and thought leaders. These people have helped shape...
By Robin Bornoff
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I was led to believe we’d have flying cars by now
July 20, 2010
The rate of technological advancement over the last 150 years has changed society beyond measure. Riding the crest of this...
By Robin Bornoff
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Red Hot Electronic Thermal Analysis?
July 14, 2010
The etymology of the phrase ‘red hot’ dates back to the 14th century describing the colour attained by metal as...
By Robin Bornoff
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The art of modelling using CFD. Part VI – Peripheral Boundary Conditions
June 21, 2010
This final blog in this series focuses on what is sometimes the most ethereal of CFD modelling arts, where and...
By Robin Bornoff
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The art of modelling using CFD. Part V – Grid
June 4, 2010
Any simulation technology based on an approach of subdividing a 3D model into many tessellated control volumes (e.g. the finite...
By Robin Bornoff
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The art of modelling using CFD. Part IV – Fans
May 20, 2010
Sometimes the ability to apply artistic interpretation of your virtual product to your simulation model of it is limited or dictated (take your pick) by...
By Robin Bornoff
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The art of modelling using CFD. Part III – TIGs
May 17, 2010
Never trust a TLA (three-letter acronym) or those who use them, unless the abbreviation provides some value in terms of...
By Robin Bornoff
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The art of modelling using CFD. Part II – Grilles
May 13, 2010
Wiki quote: “A grille is an opening of several slits side by side in a wall or metal sheet or...
By Robin Bornoff
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The art of modelling using CFD. Part I – What happens if you cross art with science?
May 11, 2010
Considering that CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) is an advanced mathematical method for predicting fluid flow and heat transfer using a computational...
By Robin Bornoff
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How much do ‘U-Value’ good thermal insulation? Part VII – “Ooo, shut that door”
April 7, 2010
Larry Grayson’s famous high camp catchphrase would be well heeded by those wanting to ensure good thermal insulation. You can make...
By Robin Bornoff
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“A Faster Horse” – Mentor ‘IDEAS for Mechanical’ driving product development
April 6, 2010
The Mentor ‘IDEAS for Mechanical’ site allows users of FloTHERM, FloVENT, FloTHERM PCB and FloEFD to post their software enhancement requests (access...
By Robin Bornoff
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How much do ‘U-Value’ good thermal insulation? Part VI – revenge of the radiative heat flux
March 12, 2010
Conduction, the transfer of heat through a solid object. Convection, the transfer of heat in moving air/fluid. Radiation, the transfer...
By Robin Bornoff
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IC package representation is central to Electronics Cooling
March 4, 2010
Electronics cooling involves ensuring that IC package temperatures do not exceed maximum rated values. If they do the probability of thermo-mechanical...
By Robin Bornoff
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How much do ‘U-Value’ good thermal insulation? Part V
March 2, 2010
Why is it that when you increase a cavity air gap size beyond ~30mm is there no subsequent detrimental affect...
By Robin Bornoff
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How much do ‘U-Value’ good thermal insulation? Part IV
February 17, 2010
100mm block, 50mm insulation, 50mm cavity air gap then 100mm block make up an external wall that in theory comply...
By Robin Bornoff
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How much do ‘U-Value’ good thermal insulation? Part III
February 5, 2010
As covered in the previous blog, air that sticks to the inside and outside walls offers a resistance to the...
By Robin Bornoff
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How much do ‘U-Value’ good thermal insulation? Part II
February 2, 2010
It might well be that a single U-value is quoted, in reality though that single value describes the ease by...
By Robin Bornoff
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How much do ‘U-Value’ good thermal insulation? Part I
January 29, 2010
I never trust a quoted value without having at least a little understanding as to what the value truly represents...
By Robin Bornoff
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Keeping the caveman warm – HVAC blog
January 27, 2010
We knapped our first flints about 2,000,000 years ago and started to shelter from the elements in caves and simple...
By Robin Bornoff
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FloVIZ, the free FloTHERM/FloVENT CFD results viewer, try it, it’s free
January 27, 2010
Computational Fluid Dynamics, CFD, is a simulation technology that provides 3D predictions of fluid flow and heat transfer for a...
By Robin Bornoff
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‘Heat Trees’ – taking a leaf out of natures book
January 19, 2010
Heatsinks aren’t a novel energy efficient type of washing bowl, they are parts that are placed on high powered IC...
By Robin Bornoff
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The Most Extreme CFD Model Ever Ever – Explained
January 12, 2010
The ability of FloTHERM to resolve a massive disparity in geometric length scale in a single model is for me...
By Robin Bornoff
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FloTHERM and its new XML neutral file format
January 8, 2010
We have recently published a new xml schema and associated xml reader for FloTHERM that offers some exciting new possibilities....
By Robin Bornoff
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The Most Extreme CFD Model Ever Ever
January 8, 2010
Electronics are small and getting smaller. The world in which we live is tending to stay at the same size....
By Robin Bornoff
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So, you want to predict component temperatures do you? Part VII
January 4, 2010
This series, despite being somewhat lengthy, is by no means a complete overview of the various methods, options and approaches...
By Robin Bornoff
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So, you want to predict component temperatures do you? Part VI
December 17, 2009
On the sliding scale of thermal component model representation king of all is a ‘detailed’ model. A 3D definition of...
By Robin Bornoff
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So, you want to predict component temperatures do you? Part V
December 7, 2009
Like a river this blog series is slowing down due to its increased width and depth, that and a lot...
By Robin Bornoff
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A trip to MPH and Top Gear Live
November 16, 2009
My current blog series titled “So, you want to predict component temperatures do you?” is a big chunky theme that...
By Robin Bornoff
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So, you want to predict component temperatures do you? Part IV
November 8, 2009
Next stop on the avenue of package thermal modelling is 2 resistor CTMs (compact thermal models). Specifically Theta_jb and Theta_jc,...
By Robin Bornoff
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So, you want to predict component temperatures do you? Part III
November 5, 2009
The simplest of compact thermal models (CTMs) is a one resistor type. Of these the most widely quoted is Theta_ja...
By Robin Bornoff
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So, you want to predict component temperatures do you? Part II
October 12, 2009
Lumped block package representation makes the best use of limited available data to simulate for an ‘indication’ of case temperature....
By Robin Bornoff
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So, you want to predict component temperatures do you? Part I
October 9, 2009
Prediction of component temperatures is central to electronics cooling simulation, the management of their temperatures is central to electronics cooling...
By Robin Bornoff
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Underfloor Thermal Insulation; Why? Part III
October 6, 2009
Local air temperature plays an important part in the resulting thermal comfort as would be experienced by someone occupying that...
By Robin Bornoff
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Underfloor Thermal Insulation; Why? Part II
September 29, 2009
In the first part of this blog I described the make up of my house extension floor ‘stack-up’, including a...
By Robin Bornoff
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Underfloor Thermal Insulation; Why? Part I
September 28, 2009
I’m building an extension to my house at the moment. Actually, let me qualify that; I’m doing some of the...
By Robin Bornoff
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Is all Software Rubbish?
September 4, 2009
How can software ever be classed as being any good if vendors keep issuing new versions of it? Was V1.0...
By Robin Bornoff
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Thermatronic Stagnation (nothing to do with male deers)
August 28, 2009
Stagnation, not the land of male deer, more the tendency for something not to flow. Still brown dirty pools spring...
By Robin Bornoff
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Fractals: Gods Artwork, Part III
August 20, 2009
Returning to this series is simply an excuse to include the most marvellous of images that are after all simply...
By Robin Bornoff
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Thermatrons Must Leave
August 19, 2009
Talk to a mathematician about thermodynamics and heat transfer and before long they’ll be showing you lots of weird symbols...
By Robin Bornoff
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At the Speed of Heat
July 31, 2009
Many analogies exist relating heat flow to fluid flow. Oops, there’s one. A good electronics thermal design is one that...
By Robin Bornoff
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A Load of HVAC TLAs
July 28, 2009
As humans we’ve lived in ‘built environments’ for a very long time. From the cave to the penthouse suite, the...
By Robin Bornoff
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How-to: Invert your thermal model to good effect
July 24, 2009
Thought I’d follow the previous post on this subject up with a slightly more detailed description of exactly how to...
By Robin Bornoff
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Clogged cooling fins, a cautionary tale
July 22, 2009
Here’s an interesting little article about the consequences of clogged cooling (heatsink) fins. A heatsink (area extender) is fine if...
By Robin Bornoff
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Invert your thermal model to good effect
July 21, 2009
Electronic thermal simulations are most commonly formed by specifying a power dissipation within a package and using numerical solution techniques...
By Robin Bornoff
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“I work with computers”
July 10, 2009
Picture the scene, a big family get together, being cornered by the latest wife of your outward going (and rather...
By Robin Bornoff
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Fractals: Gods Artwork, Part II
July 9, 2009
A fractal set; a set of numbers, or points, that when iterated through even the simplest of non-linear equations do...
By Robin Bornoff
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Fractals: Gods Artwork, Part I
July 6, 2009
I thought I’d go a little ‘off piste’ and rabbit on about fractals for a while. In the end we’ll...
By Robin Bornoff
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“All models are wrong, but some are useful” Part V
July 2, 2009
A variant on the original G. E. Box quote is: “Remember that all models are wrong; the practical question is...
By Robin Bornoff
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3D Electronics Cooling CFD, with FloTHERM, in Pictures
June 22, 2009
“A picture paints a thousand words”. Probably not as quickly though. Wouldn’t the world be a different place if we...
By Robin Bornoff
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Spend some time with FlyGuy
June 12, 2009
A nice attraction Is a welcome distraction From the work you’ve got to do. Though the time goes too fast,...
By Robin Bornoff
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“All models are wrong, but some are useful” Part IV
June 12, 2009
The penultimate issue in this series of ‘reasons why an electronics cooling model can be wrong, but hey it’s fine...
By Robin Bornoff
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Flying
June 5, 2009
If you, like me, are not a good flyer then you might like to know that the harder you squeeze...
By Robin Bornoff
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“All models are wrong, but some are useful” Part III
June 5, 2009
The next two parts in this series focus on the thermal model representations of electronic objects. The first being packages,...
By Robin Bornoff
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“All models are wrong, but some are useful” Part II
May 28, 2009
So, all models are wrong, to some extent, due to various reasons. For electronic thermal simulation the main suspect is...
By Robin Bornoff
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“All models are wrong, but some are useful” Part I
May 12, 2009
The original business case that David Tatchell and Harvey Rosten put forward for the formation of (what was to become)...
By Robin Bornoff
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Welcome along!
May 11, 2009
Hello and welcome along! I was told that if you blog about something that interests you then there’s a good...
By Robin Bornoff
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