Course Overview
A successful electronic product requires good marketing that is nourished by a foundation of reliability. The marketability is generally addressed by richness in features and user interface aspects, whereas reliability demands that the product operates as intended under all the targeted loading and environmental conditions without any kind of failures throughout the intended lifetime of the product. Although the electrical design determines a product's core operations, features and functionalities, the primary cause of failures in electronics is rooted in adverse temperatures in and around individual components. Adverse temperatures can not only cause mechanical fatigue, but also affect electrical performance through temperature dependent material properties. Hence an appropriate thermal design and management is necessary to ensure robustness and reliability. In a traditional setup, Electrical engineers are involved in the engineering design from concept to manufacturing sign-off. Whereas Thermal Engineers typically come in when temperature related failures are obvious, by which time the existing design may have already matured and therefore expensive to modify. An effective mechanism to ensure thermal reliability is to conduct thermal health checks of the electrical design as and when it is conceptualized or modified, while leaving detailed thermal design and integration to Thermal Engineers. Such a rudimentary thermal assessment can easily be performed by Electrical Engineers with a good exposure to basic heat transfer concepts. This Electronics Thermal Management Basics course addresses this need for all non-thermal designers, including Electrical Engineer.
Prerequisites
- Basic engineering mathematics (Algebra, Trigonometry and Calculus).
Teaching Method
Lectures and computer practical sessions to validate acquired knowledge.