Transcript
Transcript
Now that we’ve reviewed the fundamentals of thermal FEA and how to create a thermal FE model, follow along as we create a model for a heat sink and base plate. You can pause this video and download the starter file below to begin.Opening up the starter file under the geometry section, we see the implicit models of both the heat sink and the base plate. We’ll use these as the bases of our two FE components for this thermal analysis. They’ll both be modeled as FE solid components at this interface. Between them, we’ll add a connector to model the heat transfer through a thermal paste or interface material.In the simulation tab under model, I’ll go ahead and add a Block for our FE model to our new section. We’ll begin by working on our two FE components. Like we’ve seen in creating FE models for past simulations, we’ll need to convert these two implicit bodies to FE volume meshes to run any analyses. In this file, we’ve already meshed and remeshed the surfaces of both of our components. Then we’ve converted these surface meshes into volume meshes and finally into FE volume meshes.Note that this sample file has specified the two aluminum alloys used as materials for the heat sink and the base plate. These were pulled from the sample materials section underneath the design analysis tab. You can also create your own material for thermal analysis by using a Material Block and adding a thermal material property to the properties list of your material. If you plan to use a custom material regularly, you can use it as a Custom Block to save some effort down the road.Now that we’ve got our FE volume meshes and materials defined, I’ll go ahead and add two FE Solid Components Blocks into our components list in our model. Notice that this is a toolkit block denoted by these two vertical lines on the left side. This block allows us to avoid having to use an FE Solid Attribute Block nested inside of an FE Component Block for our solid meshes and material inputs. I’ll use our sink and base meshes and materials that have already been defined, and for visibility, I’ll go ahead and make this components list into a variable.Now to model the heat transfer between the two bodies, I’ll need to add a Thermal Bonded Contact Block as our connector. This is found in the model section under our simulation tab. Here we have an input for an independent and dependent boundary, and I’ll want to start by selecting the base plate as our independent surface. I’ll add the FE Boundary By Flood Fill Block and use the base plate as our mesh. We’ll choose faces as our entity, and isolating the visibility of our base plate using “I,” I’ll drag the gimbal to above this surface where it’s going to contact the rest of the heat sink and leave the angle at 45 degrees to choose this entire upper surface. Viewing the visibility of this boundary, we see that we’ve selected this top surface.Similarly, I’ll go into our dependent boundary input and add another FE Boundary By Flood Fill and use our sink mesh. We’ll select faces again and to select our origin, we’ll go up to our sink. Isolate that and drag our gimbal to below that surface that’s going to contact the base. Again, we’ll leave this angle at 45 degrees, and if we toggle the visibility on, we see that we’ve chosen the face that contacts the base plate. This resistance input defines the thermal resistance of contact elements, and I’ll go ahead and add the contact resistance variable included in the starter file. I can make this variable and call it thermal connector.Now that we’ve created our FE components and our thermal connector, we can add them to our FE Model Block, and our FE model is complete. I’ll make this a variable and call it Thermal FE Model.