How Thermal Engineers can Save Money on World Class Test Equipment for Thermal Analysis

May 26, 2011 - PRLog -- Thermal engineers increasingly hold the keys to making today’s high performance, small form factor, telecommunications equipment and blade servers work at their optimal level.  The growing trend in this kind of equipment is to smaller form factors.  An equal trend is higher density of components in such systems.  The dual trends of smaller systems with more components increases the thermal stress in a system.  As a result, thermal management is often the key enabler to these products functioning properly.   In the midst of this, tight research and development budgets mean thermal engineers often have difficulty affording the necessary equipment to do their most basic research to guide their development of a thermal management system.

Gone are the days when a simple heat sink, applied with thermal tape and coupled with a larger fan, are adequate for cooling electronic systems.  Instead, complex air flows in systems have to be detected, temperature gradients must be identified, and hot spots accounted for in a system wide thermal analysis.  This data is then used to create a system level thermal management solution to manage chip junction temperatures.  But, data must be collected first to create such a solution.

ATS’s eATVS-4, coupled with its omni-directional Candlestick sensors, and fully automated stageVIEW™data acquisition and reporting software, are the perfect, low cost, tools for data acquisition and thermal analysis.   Starting at $2950 for a base system, the eATVS-4 automatic temperature and velocity scanner features:  portable hot wire anemometer, fully automated to save time and increase accuracy of data acquisition, with the capability to measure both air temperature and air velocity with one sensor; both fluid and solid temperatures may be measured.

The eATVS-4 gives thermal management professionals a research-grade instrument at a price that will not bust an engineering department’s capital budget.  Additional capabilities of this instrument include: 4 channels of simultaneous measurement of air temperature and air velocity, ability to measure a temperature range from -30C to 150C, capability to measure air velocity from 0 to 50 m/s (10,000 ft/min) +/- 2% at velocity and measurement storage limited only by your computer’s storage.

ATS’s 9mm high candlestick sensors, included in the base system, are rugged, omni-directional sensors that measure both air temperature and air velocity to eliminate errors that can occur when airflow is non-isothermal.  The plastic design prevents shorting of electronics and creates a more durable sensor. Double-sided adhesive makes the sensors easy to mount on any surface.

The final part of this system is the stageVIEW Operating Software.  stageVIEW is a graphic-driven program that enables the user of the eATVS-4 to set various parameters to automatically acquire the necessary thermal data from an experiment.  The data acquisition is comprised of cycles. The number of cycles and the duration of each cycle are dictated by the user as an experiment is set up. Each cycle consists of a selected number of temperature measurements, followed by a selected number of velocity measurements. The cycles will continue until the overall time elapsed is greater than the duration of a single cycle. The user can check the availability of the sensors set up in an experiment, and select specific sensors for collecting data.  Data is stored on an attached computer and is accessible by Excel.

For more information on the economical and accurate eATVS-4, and how it can help you to develop your next thermal management solution, you can visit us online at http://www.qats.com/Products/Temperature-and-Velocity-Mea...  you can also call us at 781-769-2800 or email us at ats-hq@qats.com

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ATS - Advanced Thermal Solutions, Inc. - Celebrating 22 years - is a leading engineering and manufacturing Co. supplying thermal and mechanical packaging products for the electronics industry. How to Reach Us:
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