Introduction and Summary In today's competitive environment, the electronics industry is focusing onbusiness process re-engineering or product improvements with emphasis ondevelopment and manufacturing intervals and costs, warranty costs, fieldreliability, and customer maintenance costs. Some of the improvement methodsused are cross-functional teams, concurrent engineering, … [Read more...]
Why the traditional reliability prediction models do not work – is there an alternative?
Introduction While it is generally believed that reliability prediction methods should beused to aid product design and product development, the integrity andauditability of the traditional prediction methods have been found to bequestionable, in that the models do not predict field failures, cannot be usedfor comparative purposes, and present misleading trends and relations. … [Read more...]
Specifying filters for forced convection cooling
Introduction The importance and utility of air filters is often underestimated since itis typically an after-thought in the design cycle. The wrong filter is oftenused for an application which may compromise the electrical and thermalperformance of the system as a result of contaminant build-up. In this article,different filter designs and the selection process is reviewed to … [Read more...]
The need for a change in thermal design philosophy
Figure 1: Standard situation Figure 2: Required situation Introduction The future of many electronic companies will depend to a large extent ontheir ability to initiate techniques that bring schedules, performance, tests,support, production, life cycle costs, reliability prediction and qualitycontrol into the earliest stages of the product creation process. The … [Read more...]
Thermal conductivity of printed wiring boards
The thermal management of printed circuit boards is of increasing importanceas the power density of components and circuits continues to rise. Thesituation is complicated by the use of boards with multiple sheets of copperembedded in the electrically insulating boards to provide electromagneticshielding and to allow more three-dimensional connectivity of the circuitry bythe use … [Read more...]
