{"id":4833,"date":"2015-02-10T06:58:04","date_gmt":"2015-02-10T13:58:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.mentor.com\/robinbornoff\/?p=4833"},"modified":"2026-03-27T08:58:38","modified_gmt":"2026-03-27T12:58:38","slug":"3d-thermal-simulation-of-2d-images-a-valentines-love-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/simulating-the-real-world\/2015\/02\/10\/3d-thermal-simulation-of-2d-images-a-valentines-love-story\/","title":{"rendered":"3D Thermal Simulation of 2D Images, a Valentine’s Love Story."},"content":{"rendered":"

A full 3D thermal simulation of an electronic system requires, not surprisingly, a 3D geometric representation of the proposed design. Much of the design data for a phone, laptop, blade server, IGBT cooling system etc. often already resides in an MCAD system and is readily importable into FloTHERM<\/a> or loadable into FloTHERM XT<\/a>. EDA design data, be it a PCB layout or BGA substrate, is often held in 2 or 2.5D descriptions. The need to convert that data into a 3D thermal representation has led us to evolve a couple of unique FloTHERM technologies.<\/p>\n

\n

\"PCB_Patch_Resolution\"<\/a>Direct interfaces (installed with FloTHERM) to Expedition, BoardStation and other EDA tools extract all the necessary information required for an efficient yet thermally accurate definition of the PCB\/Substrate. The complexity of modern day PCB designs, as is evident from the winners of Mentor’s annual Technology Leadership Awards<\/a>, is such that it is intractable to extract the EDA data as 3D at source. Instead we have pioneered a ‘light’ approach whereby all metallic routing\/via information on conducting and dielectric layers is rendered to a high resolution raster image. When further compressed, the data is a fraction of the size it would otherwise be, without losing any of the fidelity required to reconstitute a detailed thermal representation. To do that, a real-time graphics processing technology is used in FloTHERM to convert the images to a thermal conductivity map. The resolution is slider-bar controlled, allowing an appropriate detail to be achieved. For forced convection applications, where most of the heat does not go into the PCB, a lower resolution can be used. For natural convection or conduction cooled environments a much higher resolution can be used that accurately resolves the patch-by-patch orthotropic conductivity thermal resistances on each PCB layer.<\/p>\n

[As an aside, here’s an interesting whitepaper on 10 tips for streamlining PCB thermal design<\/a>]<\/em><\/p>\n

An alternative technology can also be used to convert any image (regardless of source) representing a metallic distribution into an extruded identical 3D representation. Here no orthotropic pixelated patches are created, a single object with an assigned material can be created that is the 3D (extruded) equivalent of the 2D image.<\/p>\n

Just by obtaining some images of the Cu distribution in a BGA substrate a 3D model may be constructed and thermally simulated.<\/p>\n

\"BGA_Substrate\"<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"FloTHERM_Mandlebrot\"<\/a>I’m a big fan of fractals. So, to exercise this functionality further I converted a picture of a part of the Mandelbrot set into a 3D extruded solid, made it out of Copper, embedded in a lower conductivity substrate and imposed a 100degC temperature difference across it and simulated the resulting heat flow. I’ve yet to figure out a useful application for this but hey, it looks all kinds of stunning.<\/p>\n

\"MagHeatFlux\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"HeatFluxAnim4\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Not content to stop there (OK, I got carried away) I also simulated the hot spur of a well known footballing chicken (COYS!!)\"COYS\"<\/a><\/p>\n

And finally, as Valentine’s day approaches, and as is representative of the love I have both for my wife and for this functionality, the thermal behaviour of a dissipating heart (6W, k=385W\/mK embedded in a 2W\/mK substrate, peripheral HTCs of 1000W\/m2K (top) and 100W\/m2K (other sides) @0degC), based simply on an image \"LoveHeart_small\"<\/a>\u00a0 was also simulated in FloTHERM.<\/p>\n

\"LoveHeartFloTHERMModel\"<\/a>
Copper Heart Encased in Plastic<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"HotLove\"<\/a>
Temperature Distribution from the Dissipating Heart. That’s Some Hot Love.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Valentines\"<\/a>
Animated heat flux vectors (note the heart’s thermal stagnation point)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Happy Valentine’s day everyone. May your day be filled with love \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

10th February 2015, Ross-on-Wye<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A full 3D thermal simulation of an electronic system requires, not surprisingly, a 3D geometric representation of the proposed design….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":71715,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spanish_translation":"","french_translation":"","german_translation":"","italian_translation":"","polish_translation":"","japanese_translation":"","chinese_translation":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[46,65,70,80,85,94,134,225,226],"industry":[],"product":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-4833","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-coys","tag-electronics-cooling","tag-expedition","tag-flotherm","tag-flotherm-xt","tag-fractal","tag-mandelbrot","tag-valentine","tag-valentines-day"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/simulating-the-real-world\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4833","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/simulating-the-real-world\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/simulating-the-real-world\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/simulating-the-real-world\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/71715"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/simulating-the-real-world\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4833"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/simulating-the-real-world\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4833\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6420,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/simulating-the-real-world\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4833\/revisions\/6420"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/simulating-the-real-world\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4833"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/simulating-the-real-world\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4833"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/simulating-the-real-world\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4833"},{"taxonomy":"industry","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/simulating-the-real-world\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/industry?post=4833"},{"taxonomy":"product","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/simulating-the-real-world\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/product?post=4833"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/simulating-the-real-world\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=4833"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}