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Ansys Icepak
Cooling Simulation Software for Electronic Components

Ansys Icepak is a CFD solver for electronics thermal management. It predicts airflow, temperature and heat transfer in IC packages, PCBs, electronic assemblies/enclosures and power electronics.

Electronics Cooling & PCB Thermal Simulation and Analysis

Ansys Icepak provides powerful electronic cooling solutions that utilize the industry leading Ansys Fluent computational fluid dynamics (CFD) solver for thermal and fluid flow analyses of integrated circuits (ICs), packages, printed circuit boards (PCBs) and electronic assemblies. The Ansys Icepak CFD solver uses the Ansys Electronics Desktop (AEDT) graphical user interface (GUI).

  • Electromagnetics icon
    Unstructured, Body-fitted Meshing
  • Electromagnetics icon
    Comprehensive Thermal Reliability Solution
  • Electromagnetics icon
    High-fidelity CFD Solver
  • Electromagnetics icon
    Industry Leading Multiscale Multiphysics

Product Specs

Perform conduction, convection and radiation conjugate heat transfer analyses, with many advanced capabilities to model laminar and turbulent flows, and species analysis including radiation and convection.

  • MCAD and ECAD Support
  • Solar radiation
  • Parametrics and Optimization
  • Customization and Automation
  • Network Modeling
  • DC Joule Heating Analysis
  • Electro-thermal and Thermo-Mechanical
  • Extensive Libraries for Thermal
  • Liquid Cooling
  • Dynamic Thermal Management
  • Varying Flow and Power ROM

Creotech Instruments Creates Next-Generation Microsatellites with Multiphysics Simulation

Creotech implements leading-edge methodologies developed by the European Space Agency to design, assemble and integrate critical equipment that meets space standards.

Satellite Simulation
"Ansys multiphysics tools provide a highly integrated environment and have greatly improved the speed and affordability for developing our new HyperSat microsatellite platform."
— Tomasz Zawistowski Project Manager / HyperSat Creotech Instruments / Piaseczno, Poland

Repairing orbiting microsatellites is impossible due to extreme logistical challenges. Satellite engineers must ensure that equipment is space-proven and extremely reliable before launch. Creating individual satellite components generates high costs, requiring satellite integrators to meet stringent design requirements and satisfy high production process standards. Creotech Instruments’ use of multiphysics simulation effectively addresses these complex challenges.

July 2024

What's New

Ansys Icepak delivers new capabilities and improvements in performance, meshing, and modeling in 2024 R2.

2024 R2 HF Electronics
Thermal Mesh Fusion in Icepak

Icepak can now automatically divide complex models into coupled subdomains and generate a mesh, which enables initial mesh generation and faster time to results.


Icepak Applications

View all Applications
PCB and IC Packages

PCBs, ICs and IC packages

Ansys’ complete PCB design solution enables you to simulates PCBs, ICs, and packages and accurately evaluate an entire system.

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Electronics Reliability

Learn how Ansys integrated electronics reliability tools can help you  solve your biggest thermal, electrical and mechanical reliability challenges.

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Batteries

Ansys battery modeling and simulation solutions use multiphysics to help you maximize battery performance and safety while reducing cost and testing time.

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Electric Motors

Ansys electric motor design software progresses from concept design to detailed electromagnetics, thermal and mechanical analysis of electric motors.

Electronics Applications

Predict airflow, temperature and heat transfer for electronics assemblies and printed circuit boards

With CAD-centric (mechanical and electrical CAD) and multiphysics user interfaces, Icepak facilitates the solving of today’s most challenging thermal management problems in electronics products and assemblies. Icepak uses sophisticated CAD healing, simplification and metal fraction algorithms that reduce simulation times, while providing highly accurate solutions that have been validated against real-world products. The solution’s high degree of accuracy results from the highly automated, advanced meshing and solver schemes, which ensure a true representation of the electronics application.

Icepak Capabilities

 

Key Features

Icepak includes all modes of heat transfer — conduction, convection and radiation — for steadystate and transient electronics cooling applications.

  • Electronics Desktop 3D layout GUI
  • DC joule heating analysis
  • Multiple-fluid analysis
  • Reduced order flow and thermal
  • Thermo-electric cooler modeling
  • Package characterization
  • Integrated graphical modeling environment

Power dissipation of ICs and power losses across the board are key inputs for thermal analysis.

You can also conduct thermomechanical stress analysis and airflow analysis to select the ideal heat sink or fan solution. Our integrated workflow enables you to conduct design trade-offs, resulting in improved reliability and performance.

Icepak users can easily assemble automated workflows within the Ansys ecosystem to complete multiphysics analyses for electromigration, dielectric breakdown and multi-axial solder joint fatigue.

Work Smarter with Product Bundles

Thermal Analysis Product Pairings

Improve wireless communications, boost signal coverage and maintain connectivity for antenna systems, predict product performance and establish safe operating temperatures with these product pairings.

Electromagnetic Losses with Thermal Coupling For Temperature-Dependent Antenna Performance Assessment (Icepak & HFSS)
Ensuring the thermal stability of antenna-enabled 5G infrastructure, automotive radar, IoT devices and mobile electronic devices is critical in producing expected behavior. Power hungry activity such as video calls, online-based games or varying environmental conditions causes significant swings in device temperatures. If a phone’s battery becomes too hot, it can lose charge or even create safety issues. Also, high temperatures can affect other electronic components within a phone and impact RF antenna performance. Breakdown of a phone’s connectivity with mobile carriers, Bluetooth or Wi-Fi is traceable to thermal problems. You can predict these issues before you build the hardware by simulating your design using Ansys tools. For example, electrical engineers can dynamically link Ansys HFSS and Ansys Icepak in the Electronics Desktop to simulate the temperature of the antenna. Based on the electromagnetic and thermal coupling solutions, they can modify antenna design and predict antenna efficiency and the overall thermal and EM performance of the product. These EM and thermal simulations help to improve wireless communications, boost signal coverage and maintain connectivity for antenna-enabled systems.
Board-Level Electrothermal Coupling (Icepak and SIwave)
Even a marginal rise in temperature can affect the performance and reliability of electronic components, leading to system-wide problems. Board-level power integrity simulations within SIwave can be combined with Icepak thermal simulations to get a complete picture of a PCB’s electrothermal performance. SIwave and Icepak automatically exchange DC power and temperature data to calculate Joule heating losses within PCBs and packages to obtain highly accurate temperature field and resistive loss distributions. These DC electrothermal solutions let you manage the heat produced by your designs and predict thermal performance and safe operating temperatures of chips, packages and boards.

ICEPAK RESOURCES & EVENTS

Featured Webinars

On Demand Webinar
Ansys Icepak Cooling Fan
Ansys 2023 R1: What's New in Ansys Icepak & Mechanical in AEDT

Learn about the latest updates and newest functionality in Ansys Icepak and Mechanical in AEDT.

On Demand Webinar
Ansys On Demand Webinar
Thermal Management for Power Electronics

This webinar showcases Icepak’s solutions for power electronics.

On Demand Webinar
Ansys On Demand Webinar
Ansys Icepak and Sherlock For Temperature Cycling

This webinar will demonstrate an automated process of thermal modeling of printed circuit boards.


Case Studies

Ansys Case Study

Creotech Instruments Creates Next-Generation Microsatellites with Multiphysics Simulation

Learn how Ansys multiphysics simulation helped Creotech create virtual prototypes of satellite components, modules and subsystems, enabling their engineers to analyze designs and verify their expected operation.

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SuperGrid Institute Uses Ansys’ Solutions to Develop Power Electronics Technologies for Future Power Grids

SuperGrid Institute can efficiently design and simulate power converters thanks to the nonlinear and linear solvers in Ansys software.

Ansys Case Study

Ansys + Hewlett Packard Labs

Toshiba improves product reliability and decreases development time through electromagnetic–thermal–stress coupling.


White Papers & Articles

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Application Brief

Thermal Solutions for 3D IC Packages and System

3D IC thermal analysis involves tiny features in chips, the package surrounding the chips, and the board or system connecting and surrounding the package. Since they are all thermally coupled, neglecting or oversimplifying one of the components can lead to inaccurate chip temperature prediction.


Videos



Ansys software is accessible

It's vital to Ansys that all users, including those with disabilities, can access our products. As such, we endeavor to follow accessibility requirements based on the US Access Board (Section 508), Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), and the current format of the Voluntary Product Accessibility Template (VPAT).