Apply Thermal Conditions

Define and apply the thermal conditions for the heat sink and chip.

You specify a solid interface with a tolerance to define how the section interacts with its surroundings during a simulation. You apply a volumetric heat source to apply a distributed heat flux that models heat energy transfer into or out of a fluid or solid region.

In this example, you first specify thermal contact to enable conjugate heat transfer between the fluid and the solid sections. The tolerance type and tolerance parameters represent the contact between the solid sections of the CPU and the air flow. You then apply a volumetric heat source to specify the heat power in terms of total heat or as heat power per unit volume.

This task shows you how to:

Define the Thermal Contact

  1. From the Standard section of the action bar, click Feature Manager .
  2. From the Feature Manager, double-click the Solid Interface.1 row.
    The Solid Interface dialog box appears.
  3. From the Contact search parameters, select Relative as the tolerance type, and enter a normal tolerance of 0.05.
  4. Enter an angle tolerance of 60deg.
  5. Click OK.

Define the Heat Source

  1. From the Loads section of the action bar, click Volumetric Heat Source .
  2. Select the chip as the geometry support.
  3. Select Total as the Heat power.
  4. Enter a magnitude of 120W for the heat power.

    This represents the amount of heat energy that is produced in the chip while the CPU runs.

  5. Click OK.