High-Power Thermal Analysis

using
HFSS and ANSYS Mechanical Integration

Martin Vogel, PhD

Product Management Team
Why couple simulators for electro-magnetics and multi-physics?

Electronics produce heat, which can cause malfunctions.

Courtesy of
 Existing Electromagnetics – Multiphysics Links
Electromagnetic simulators:

HFSS, Q3D Maxwell SIwave

ANSYS Mechanical ANSYS FLUENT ANSYS ICEPAK

Thermal Solvers Thermodynamics cooling of
and fluid flow electronics

ANSYS Mechanical
Stress Solver
Raytheon high-power connector

Co-axial Glass + Micro-strip Metal

cable Kovar trace housing
Before turning power on

Co-axial pin connecting to microstrip trace

Courtesy of
Soon after turning power on

Excessive heat has destroyed the connector.

Courtesy of
HFSS has been “data integrated” with Workbench
Analyze the model in HFSS

Pin connecting to trace

Easy to link to thermal simulators
Add boundary conditions for convection and cooling.

Natural convection
Cooling on bottom face
Outline of thermal model
Temperature exceeds 300 deg C in kovar.
Link thermal to structural analysis
Resulting schematic
Deformation up to 22 µm
Stress mostly in inner conductor
 Improve the design.

• Kovar, responsible for the high temperatures, has been replaced by a different metal.

• Temperatures may still be high, which Teflon cannot handle. Accurate analysis
wanted.

• Use the two-way thermal coupling to account for temperature-dependent materials.

Why two-way thermal?
Teflon loss tangent increases with temperature. Run-away effect possible.

Glass transition
Two-way thermal link

Solve EM model at initial temperature.

Send electromagnetic
loss to thermal simulator.

Solve EM model with

Determine temperatures. new temperatures.

Send temperatures back to EM model.

Material parameters change.

ΔT < threshold?
No
Yes
Done
Two-way thermal analysis:
Final temperatures with normal Teflon
EM Power Losses as function of two-way thermal iteration

Volume Loss in normal Teflon

Surface Loss on metals

Volume Loss in low-loss Teflon

Temperatures as function of two-way thermal iteration

Tmax Normal Teflon

Tmax Low-Loss Teflon

Tmin Normal Teflon

Tmin Low-Loss Teflon

Two-way thermal analysis:
Final temperatures with low-loss Teflon