Credit points: 3.5;

Prerequisites: Heat Transfer 

Course objectives: To provide senior undergraduate and graduate students with practical tools for thermal analyses and design of electronic systems.

Short syllabus:

Needs for thermal control of the electronic equipment. Temperature effect on the component reliability. Industry and military specifications. Thermal packaging and thermal resistance levels Chip package thermal resistance Rjc. ; Thermal conductive heat transfer within the printed circuit boards (PCB). Card guides. Spreading resistance. Thermal contact resistance and thermal interface materials. Forced and natural convective heat transfer in electronic cooling. Forced convection within circular and rectangular ducts. Hydraulic resistance; Heat transfer fins. Overall heat transfer coefficient. Design optimization of the natural convective finned heat sink. Analysis of forced-convective air-cooled finned heat sinks; Fan matching for the air cooled heat sink at different altitudes. Limits for air cooling.

Review of radiation heat transfer in electronics. Heat transfer by radiation from the finned heat sink. Calculation of the solar load on a system.

Compact heat sinks and liquid cooled cold plates for electronic cooling applications. Friction factor and heat transfer factors of various compact heat transfer surfaces. Cold plate heat exchanger analysis. Working liquid selection; Microchannel cold plates.

Fundamentals of thermoelectric (TE) cooling. Standard thermoelectric cooling (TEC) modules and typical TE cooling scheme. Governing equations and main parameters affecting the TEC performance. Design of the thermoelectric cooling system . Advanced cooling technologies: Heat pipes. Phase-Change-Materials (PCM);

Project: Conceptual design of the thermoelectric system for laser diodes cooling.