Filling the void

By

We all know that in simulation it is important to model as much of the relevant physics as possible, but there are some instances where things are commonly missed.

Take the example of fixing a heat sink to a CPU in your computer. We know that at a microscopic level the touching faces are not smooth but resemble something like this:

image

In practice electrical engineers use a thermally conductive gel to fill the gaps otherwise the interstitial air would form a barrier limiting heat removal away from the CPU. This is often overlooked in simulation models but I was recently reminded about such a solution in SolidWorks Flow.

It is possible to insert a ‘Contact Resistance’ feature that lets you define a) the resistance between two surfaces directly, or b) a material and its applied thickness. Just a quick tip though, you only need to pick one of the contacting faces when defining the contact resistance, otherwise it gets applied twice!

image

That got me thinking about SolidWorks Simulation Professional and the thermal module. A quick check and low and behold, there is a contact set here too that allows you to define a thermal resistance between two faces.

So whether you are using thermal or flow, you don’t have to fiddle around creating fake geometry to model these kinds of important physical features. Clever really!

SOLIDWORKS

SOLIDWORKS

Dassault Systèmes SolidWorks Corp. offers complete 3D software tools that let you create, simulate, publish, and manage your data. SolidWorks products are easy to learn and use, and work together to help you design products better, faster, and more cost-effectively. The SolidWorks focus on ease-of-use allows more engineers, designers and other technology professionals than ever before to take advantage of 3D in bringing their designs to life.
SOLIDWORKS

@SOLIDWORKS