New approach for faster thermal modeling of PCBs based on power module applications

Abstract

In this paper, a thermal model of a printed Circuit Board (PCB) is developed to create a computationally light alternative to traditional methods such as the Finite Element Method (FEM) and the Finite Volume Method (FVM). The developed model is based on the analogies between thermal and electrical calculations. From these relations, a three dimensional network of resistors is created, which reflects the thermal behavior of the PCB. This approach of creating a network of thermal resistors was shown before in. Here only fixed resistor values for the resistors are used. To expand this, all temperature dependent values of the generated model should be calculated during one single simulation run.