mecheng66: Thanks for the suggestion. I tried Heat Sink Designer and it's very impressive.
IRstuff: I wouldn't call Fluent's product 'unacceptable' but I am looking for something better along these lines:
1. Fast and easy to use. We are not thermal experts here and only have a need to use the tool occasionally. Fluent's Qfin isn't bad but Heat Sink Designer is a good example of a much better user interface.
Fluent Software named "IcePack" is particular meant for the thermal designs of the heat sinks. It is provided by inbuilt functions and fan specification from various companies to make the design process easy.
thermcool-
It sounds like ICEPAK would be a Ferrari where a Toyota will do. It is a more general-purpose tool tailor to electronic products. The learning curve and price would both be too long for finder1.
finder1-
Hopefully you're not planning on putting non-engineers at the wheel. Every analytical tool has a price to pay in the learning curve. If the tool is too easy to use then I would be leery because it may not provide the flexibility you need. It may even force you to make assumptions you don't wish to make.
That's exactly right, tunalover. We looked at IcePak and Flotherm - great tools but overkill for what we need, and a major investment in $ and time.
An engineering tool is just that - a tool for engineers. It will be used by EEs with some experience in heat sink selection.
You are also correct about the limitations, though I never met a tool that was "too easy". HeatSinkDesigner is limited to natural convection and "parallel flow through plate fins" which covers most of our applications, but not all. They offer a free Flotherm model of any sink their tool can't handle. I intend to test this claim soon.
I've been using Heatsinkdesigner for a couple of weeks now and it's pretty clear what the limits are. It basically tells you how a heat sink will perform in a wind tunnel, where you spec the tunnel size and the heat source details. This is useful but you have to understand how to apply it to your application. You should have a basic understanding of electronics cooling.
I'm very happy with it so far. The optimizer and catalog search are very slick. I don't the high-end tools can do this.
Optimization capability is not unique to HeatSinkDesigner. Flotherm, for example, has a very powerful and sophisticated "command center" for setting up a design of experiments and running a series of simulations that can optimize sink design, component layout, vent locations, etc.
What is unique, I think, about HeatSinkDesigner is the catalog search capability.
I've used Flotherm before and clearly HeatSinkDesigner is not in the same class, but it's not really an either/or question. HeatSinkDesigner is just a well-designed, cheap, handy little tool. I tend to gravitate to it for quick feasibility checks. I haven't tried it yet for finding suppliers, but it's already paid for itself.
Have you tried MacroFlow from Innovative Research? Program is done by Dr. Suhas Patankars company (CFD expert). The program looks relatively simple, but not braindead. It is NOT a Fluent style product. Here is their blurb:
"MacroFlow is very useful for the thermal design of a variety of electronics systems. Because practical electronics cooling systems can be considered as networks of flow paths through components such as screens, filters, fans, ducts, bends, heat sinks, power supplies, and card arrays, MacroFlow based analysis of such systems is very simple and fast in terms of model definition, computation, and examination of results."
Finder1 asked for a tool to design heat sinks. MacroFlow doesn't predict heat sink performance or component temperatures.
I haven't looked into MacroFlow in depth because it's pretty easy to quickly model simple systems on Flotherm CFD (whereas HeatsinkDesigner is faster and does some things that CFD cannot). But for someone who can't afford CFD, the combination of MacroFlow and HeatSinkDesigner might be worth looking into.
