Thermal Design Techniques Comment on the problems excess heat that are likely to arise in a power system.

Describe techniques that can be applied to overcome it and identify problems that it may cause.

Thermal Design in Power Systems

The velocity of cooling fluid is important, but does not have a linear influence on the convection coefficient, h. The relationship is:

Airflow Velocity
Consequently, the airflow velocity will eventually have diminishing returns in terms of cooling effectiveness as shown . The physical explanation of this is that, when the airflow velocity becomes high, all of the heated air is swept away from the surface and replaced with unheated air. Once this occurs, there will be a finite rate of heat transfer depending on the unheated air temperature.

Fluid Velocity

Free Convection
Natural or free convection is conceptually treated the same as forced convection, except with low laminar flow rates. The value of the convection coefficient for air will depend on many of the above factors, but will typically be in the range of 0.003 to 0.016 for natural convection systems and in the range of 0.006 to 0.32 for forced convection systems for a flat plate.

Convection

The effectiveness of convective heat transfer can be enhanced by: Increasing the surface area Reducing temperature of cooling fluid Increasing velocity of cooling fluid Increasing turbulence of cooling fluid

Reliability
A power converter is composed of a collection of electronic components, materials and manufacturing processes. None of these elements are perfect, and each can fail in some fashion that could jeopardize the functionality of the converter and perhaps the entire system. Reliability is a measure of how often these failures will occur.

Reliability Analysis
In electronic reliability analysis it is assumed that the failures are independent and random. This means that a failure in one component, even though it may cause the system to malfunction, will not cause other components to fail and that the failures are distributed in time according to an exponential statistical distribution with a constant failure rate vs. time.

MTBF
It is also possible to express the reliability of a component or system by using the reciprocal of . Since is in units of failures per unit of time, the reciprocal will have units of time between failures. The technically correct term for the reciprocal is Mean Time To Fail (MTTF). A more frequently used term is Mean Time Between Failures (MTBF).

Failure Rate

Factors affecting failure

Quality of the component Voltage/Current stresses applied Operating Temperature Mechanical Stress Environment (Shock, Vibration, etc.) Complexity of design Construction Techniques

Stress Testing
The three most commonly used parts stress methods are those developed by the US Military Agencies (MILHDBK- 217), the US Telecom Industry (Bellcore 332) and the British Telecom Industry (HRD5). While the general methodology is consistent between these three agencies, the component databases and stress factors differ so that they will give three different predictions for the same design.

Heat Sinks - Radiation

The equation for calculating power transfer via radiation is:

Where: Q = Power Transferred in W A = Effective Surface Area of hot object e = Surface Emissivity s = Stefan-Boltzmann constant = 3.66 x 10-11W / in2 K4 TO = Temperature of hot object K TO = Temperature of hot object --K TS = Temperature of Surroundings K

Surface Emissivity

The surface emissivity, e, is a factor between zero and one that defines how effective the surface is at radiating heat. A perfect black body has an emissivity of one.

Example
As an example, let's calculate the amount of power transferred by radiation from a large studmounted power diode in a free convection environment. The surface of the diode is at 100 C (373 K) and the heat is being radiated to the surrounding air which is at a temperature of 50 C (323 K). The effective surface area is 0.5 in2. The surface emissivity is 0.11 for nickel plating.

Result

From the equation we obtain: Q = (0.5) (0.11) (3.66 x 10-11)(3734 - 3234) = 17 mW

Shorts to Earth
Shorts to earth: At the initiation of the fault, a large fault current will flow through the fuse. This current will be limited only by the total resistance in the circuit, Rtotal, and the R/L time constant. Rtotal, includes: Rmain Rbranch Resistance of Fuse Resistance of Fault Internal Resistance of the source

Shorts

Fuses
The fuse will not open until the current through it exceeds its rating for a period of time determined by its construction characteristics. Thus, the fault is not cleared instantly, and there is a definite period of time during which the intermediate bus is shorted to earth. This situation is shown in the diagram. During this time interval, the fault current will rise exponentially as shown in the figure according to the expression:

Fault Current