Malvern, Pa. — Vishay Intertechnology, Inc. has improved its ThermaSim online MOSFET thermal simulation tool to provide designers with increased simulation accuracy, efficiency, and user friendliness.
The free tool helps designers speed time to market by allowing detailed thermal simulations to be performed before prototyping. It is the first online MOSFET simulation that uses structurally detailed power MOSFET models created using finite element analysis (FEA) techniques to increase the simulation’s accuracy, according to Vishay.
Designers also may define other heat-dissipating components and simulate their effect on the MOSFET’s thermal operation. Simulating these components ensures optimum device selection for application specifications and eliminates fallouts during thermal-performance line testing, said Vishay.
Applicable to any power MOSFET application, ThermaSim in particular targets high-current, high-temperature applications such as automotive, fixed telecom, desktop and laptop computer, and industrial systems.
With the improved tool, users can now define and evaluate the impact of solder thickness (from 100 percent to 150 percent of the nominal thickness of 0.1 mm), and the thermal glue thickness between the component and a heat sink.
In addition, the component model accounts for the air gap between the component and printed-circuit-board (PCB) surface where applicable.
For improved simulation accuracy, component pads/footprints are separated from the component model, along with higher internal/external meshing resolution and additional materials for PCBs, heat sinks, and the thermally conducting insulators.
Vishay also has enhanced simulation efficiency through improved meshing methods and smaller PDF files.
Offering improved user friendliness, the tool now features several completed examples that can be downloaded to the user environment, modified, saved, and used. It also provides user tips and prevents wrong inputs. The tool now allows for selection of steady-state, transient, or RC network simulations.
The tool also offers better selection and manipulation (such as same component in different location on PCB, select/edit internal PCB layers from side-view picture, select/edit via zones from top-view picture and select/edit solder thickness), and better documentation capabilities (expandable summary tree of the entire simulation is provided just before running the simulation and the filename and defined commenting text field are fed back on the simulation results).