Computer and Storage Devices

Electronics engineers are faced with a variety of challenges in the computer and storage device industries. In the computer industry, engineers focus on the design of the latest desktop and laptops computers, as well as high-end servers and super computers. These engineers are confronted with an increasing power density, a continued demand for air cooling and a drive to reduce noise pollution. Also, in this highly competitive market, engineers have to operate in a very short design cycle. In the storage device industry, companies focus on the design of hard and disk drives, DRAM memory modules and complete networking storage devices . Among the challenges in this industry are thermal management and mechanical reliability, as well as the need to simulate complicated phenomenal like disk drive flutter. There is also a continued drive for cost reduction due to a cost sensitive and highly competitive market segment.

ANSYS offers computer and storage device designers a variety of engineering simulation tools including electronics thermal management with ANSYS Icepak, mechanical reliability with ANSYS Mechanical and ANSYS Structural and electromagnetic simulation with ANSYS Emag and ANSYS Multiphysics.

For thermal management, the product ANSYS Icepak is used to conduct system level CFD simulation including forced air cooling, fan selection and heat sink design. ANSYS general purpose CFD codes are used to conduct coupled CFD and acoustic analysis to examine tradeoffs between thermal design and acoustic compati bility. Disk drive designers use A NSYS FSI solutions to conduct two-way coupled fluid-structural simulations and optimize hard drive designs in a single environment, without the need for a third-party coupling scheme or a post-processing product.

In mechanical simulation, engineers can examine thermo-mechanical stresses in packages and boards, as well as the fatigue that develops during thermal cycling. Furthermore, disk rotary dynamics can be simulated and evaluated for thermal induced deformation of the disk drives. ANSYS explicit solvers are used to study the mechanical stresses that develop during vibration or a drop test.

For electromagnetics, ANSYS Multiphysics is used to conduct full wave electromagnetic simulation and evaluate far and near magnetic field intensity in order to ensure optimum system shielding in order to comply with US and EU emission regulations.

Through this breath and depth of capabilities, ANSYS offers you multidisciplinary simulation tools that enable you to examine the tradeoffs between product performance, thermal design, mechanical reliability and electromagnetic compatibility. By reducing redundancy and streamlining the design process in a single platform, you can shorten your design cycle and reduce the overall cost of your design process.