Package puts PCB designs to the thermal test: News from Fluent

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Iceboard is a novel board-level thermal validation tool for printed circuit board designers. Although Iceboard is 100% compatible with Fluent's comprehensive thermal modelling software, Icepak, it is a stand-alone tool, intended only for board designers. "Iceboard's sole purpose is to help board designers to quickly verify their designs for thermal compliance.

Board designers will appreciate the ease with which they can import their neutral ECAD files from software like Cadence Allegro or Mentor BoardStation and filter the data", says Iceboard Product Manager Rajesh Nair.

"And when they have their results, they can easily export HTML reports and Icepak-compatible files for further processing in a seamless, integrated fashion", he concludes.

Iceboard employs computational fluid dynamics (CFD) technology to provide a comprehensive prediction of flow and heat transfer.

The software uses a sequential series of file import, setup and reporting wizards to walk the user through the process of thermal verification.

The user environment closely mimics the ECAD experience, with a tree-based model manager, 3D mouse-based view manipulation, and dynamic rotation, translation and zoom.

Precreated Icepak library objects can be applied to the thermal model selectively when a high-level of detail is needed for a high-fidelity result.

Although the preprogrammed selection options for component and board materials and mesh sizes almost never need to be changed, the user has wide-ranging ability to fine-tune every option.

Results are presented in an automatically assembled HTML report.

Visualisation and plotting options are designed to present the information most useful to thermal verification at the click of a button.

Iceboard has a full-featured computational fluid dynamics engine running under the hood, the same one found in Fluent's flagship general-purpose flow analysis tool, Fluent, and its electronics cooling-specific derivative, Icepak.

Users see the benefit of this in the time-to-solution and reliability of the results.

A 50-component board can be verified for thermal compliance in 15min or less.

Iceboard 1.0 is now available worldwide through Fluent's network of offices and distributors for an annual cost of $12,000 per seat.

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