Electronic Systems

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MacroFlow for Thermal Design of Electronic Systems

What is MacroFlow?

MacroFlow Electronics Systems is an integrated molding, processing, and data visualization software package for predicting flow and temperature distributions in electronics system packaging design.

MacroFlow is very useful for the thermal design of a variety of electronics systems. Because practical electronics cooling systems can be considered as networks of flow paths through components such as screens, filters, fans, ducts, bends, heat sinks, power supplies, and card arrays, MacroFlow based analysis of such systems is very simple and fast in terms of model definition, computation, and examination of results.

MacroFlow allows you to create and test innovative thermal solutions with drag-and-drop, easy-to-use Graphical User Interface (GUI) using familiar icons. With a comprehensive component library, powerful solver algorithm, and data visualization tools, you can obtain and examine results in a matter of minutes on a PC. MacroFlow runs on PC platforms, under Windows 95/98 and Windows NT.

Applications MacroFlow Electronics Systems

MacroFlow is applicable to the design and analysis of system level cooling for electronics used in: computers, data processing, telecommunications, military and commercial avionics, automotive and transportation equipment, consumer goods, and medical applications. MacroFlow can be applied to open or closed systems, air or liquid cooling, and forced or natural convection for:

PC enclosures

Liquid cooled supercomputers

Workstations

Telecommunications cabinets

High-end Servers

Avionics cooling

Projection equipment

VME based microcomputers

Mainframes

Electronic navigation systems

Intricate Cooling Manifold

Base Transceiver Station

Air-Cooled Servers

Electronics Enclosure

System Cabinet Power Supply (6 kW)

Electronic Cooling systems

Performance of Heat Sinks

Burn-In Convection Oven

Consumer electronics

Space and satellite electronics

For a proposed avionics cooling system, MacroFlow was used to select cooling fans and blowers, and to optimize their placement. This MacroFlow model was then used to assess the impact of fan/blower failure on the operating temperatures of essential components.

Customers of MacroFlow Electronics Systems

Users of MacroFlow Electronics Systems

Testimonials

What experts say about MacroFlow and Flow Network Modeling (FNM)

Benefits of MacroFlow Electronics Systems

MacroFlow enables you to visually represent system cooling concepts that will work and show why they work. Furthermore, you will achieve the following benefits during the project:

	Shorten the system design cycle - Create more innovative network and systems and evaluate competing concepts quickly and accurately. Design alternatives can be quickly evaluated.
	*Improve product quality and performance* - Identify problem areas for detailed analysis, generate new design ideas, investigate thoroughly the design space, and improve project team communications on design tradeoffs.
	*Minimize development cost* - Use computational prototyping during design iterations.
	*Conduct "What-if" studies* - Investigate system performance and life cycle issues such as fan failure, weather, altitude, and dirty environment performance.

Capabilities

Features and Capabilities of MacroFlow Electronics Systems include:

	Analysis of steady and transient systems.
	Intuitive graphical user interface for easy construction of flow system representations.
	A built-in library of components such as inlets, screens, filters, ducts, heat sinks, power supplies, fans, card arrays, and heat exchangers.
	Ability to modify, extend, and customize flow and thermal characteristics of any component.
	Powerful solution algorithm for fast and robust solution of complex models.
	Comprehensive post-processing through plots tables, animations.

An Integrated Design Environment

MacroFlow's integrated computing environment for the electronics system thermal designer reflects the way industrial design is conducted. You save time, get designs into prototype stage faster or redesigns, identify problem areas sooner, and evaluate numerous design alternatives. The MacroFlow modeling architecture builds your system thermal/flow model with:

	A flexible Graphical User Interface (GUI) to construct flow networks representing the system layout.
	A built-in engineering library of common electronic packaging components. The flow and heat transfer characteristics of the components are taken from handbooks and vendor data: they can also be user-defined.
	A robust and efficient solver to calculate flow, pressure, and temperature at every critical point in the electronics system package.
	An integrated, post-processing data and visualization suite for examination of results and their communication to team members.
	Built-in engineering utilities for fast modeling including units conversion, calculated variables, and component libraries for common electronic packaging elements.

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Component Library of Components for Electronics Cooling

For electronic system packaging design, the MacroFlow Electronics Systems library provides an extensive list of pre-defined flow and thermal characteristics for the most common packaging elements including:

Flow Path Elements:

	Nozzles, intake screens, and exhausts with selectable geometries
	Straight and screened inlet and exhaust
	Ducts and zero resistance flow paths
	Abrupt or gradual area changes, elbows, orifices, valves
	Junction components including tees, wyes, and crosses

Electronic Packaging Specialties:

	Performance curves for fans and blowers
	Plenums and tanks
	Heat sinks and generalized heat exchanger model
	Filters with dust loading modeling for life cycle studies
	Power supply
	Generic resistance for special user defined characteristics

All thermal and flow information corresponding to a component is user accessible for customization, naming, and storage in a user-defined database. Further, performance curves for nonlinear, or time-dependent data can be added using polynomial, or piecewise-linear data form.

A Comprehensive Heat Transfer Capability

MacroFlow enables accurate prediction of the system temperature distributions in one unified architecture. Calculated variables include the bulk fluid temperature in all flow paths, the average surface temperature of every component, and heat loss/gain. Additionally, a variety of thermal boundary conditions can be modeled such as:

	Specified heat dissipation or heat flux
	Environmental heat loss at a specified temperature due to natural or forced convection in combination with radiation
	Incident external radiation such as the solar flux

The thermal resistance considered includes the internal, wall, and external resistances in presence of heat loss to the surroundings. The internal and external heat transfer coefficients can be calculated from empirical or user-defined correlations for forced and natural convection.

The Technique of Flow Network Modeling (FNM)

The conventional thermal design process for electronics systems involves hand calculations or spreadsheets and Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) analysis. However, spreadsheets are system-specific, inflexible, and require a lot of time to construct. Also CFD analysis is very time-intensive in terms of model construction, solution, and examination of results.

MacroFlow uses a technique called Flow Network Modeling (FNM). FNM uses component characteristics based on empirical correlations from handbooks, vendor performance data, or in-house measurements. Unlike spreadsheets, FNM places no restrictions on the interconnections of the flow paths. As a result, FNM and its implementation in MacroFlow provides a simple, fast, and accurate method for rapid examination of various system configurations, exploration of design improvements, and investigation of "what-if" scenarios. More...

Papers

For more information on MacroFlow Electronic Systems, contact post@technomediation.com or, please fill in the Innovative Research request form.

Technomediation Services®

Tel.: +31-(0)13-5717211 / Fax: +31-(0)13-5717211 / e-mail: post@technomediation.com