Client Projects
Coolpower
The challenge
A German based automotive infotainment company contacted European Thermodynamics with regards to supporting their own in-house thermal management team when certain aspects of the thermo-mechanical case design would not achieve the required stable operating temperature when fitted to the surrounding dashboard environment.
The engineering team began by defining the problem which contained aspects of structural rigidity and vibration, whilst also considering materials in terms of thermal performance, cost and high volume manufacture.
CFD modelling and analysis shows air velocity (left) and temperature analysis (right)
The result
The thermal modelling team initially led the investigation and developed a relatively simple heatsink construction from the aluminium material AL6063 (T6 hardened). However, the success to cooling the devices effectively laid in the fact that we had developed a particular heatpipe, including it’s fluidic and condensing core structure and had embedded it within the heatsink. We sought further assistance from the group’s chemistry team within T-Global Technology, who formulated a specific silicon free thermal gel to assist the ‘thru Z axis’ thermal travel.
The heatsink assembly was achieved via a passive approach, bringing the benefits of a rugged, acoustically noise-free thermal assembly that is now in mass manufacture and also meets the financial budget for the thermal componentry.
