Thermal simulations for electronic equipment using the software package THEBES

Abstract

The THEBES software package was especially written to simulate air flows in electronic devices cooled by natural or forced convection, such as telecommunication racks, computers, or large electrical equipment. THEBES consists of four modules. The first module deals with management of the printed-circuit-board databank and of the fan databank while the second module is used to enter the geometrical, thermal, and hydraulic data for the equipment under study. The third module computes the 3-D Napier-Stokes equations, and the mass and energy equations, while the last module deals with the visualization of the results of simulation such as air velocity and temperature. The equipment under study is automatically meshed during the preprocessing of the data. The geometry is entered interactively through the description of 'objects' such as printed circuits boards, metal sheets, openings, fans, and 3-D obstacles. The description of the air flow in the electronic device is useful not only for comparison between different designs but also to locate hot spots or to study the impact of the modification on mechanical parts. The authors describe the capabilities of the software and its field of application. Examples of thermal optimization studies are given for a 19 inch rack and for a transmission slimrack.<>