As an engineer, you are faced with the challenge of developing innovative designs that are functional and reliable but completed quickly and at a low-cost point. Simulation tools have come a long way and can assist in critical decision making. These tools are enabling engineers to create fewer physical prototypes by allowing them to predict temperatures in a variety of scenarios. In this blog, we will show you why accuracy, speed, and the ability to analyze transients are essential to the success of your thermal modeling process.
Long Simulations Prevent You from Reaching Your Best Iteration
Long simulation times are a dreaded effect of transient simulations. They prohibit you from testing a maximum number of iterations before project deadlines arrive, which is detrimental to design optimization. If the project faces similar delays at each step in the process, it will be difficult for your team and other teams to meet deadlines.
Simulation speed was one of our top priorities when building TAITherm. We understand that time is valuable in the engineering industry. Faster simulations allow you to create product designs prudently. Analyzing different design options in the simulation process is more cost-effective than physically prototyping multiple designs in later stages.
Features for Faster Simulation
TAITherm is designed for fast simulation using flexibility in meshing geometries and varying levels of fidelity. TAITherm meshes can make use of surface or solid volume meshing techniques using a wide range of mesh sizes. The flexibility of meshing allows the software to simulate without requiring a lot of detail or small time steps, alleviating computing time. You can control the amount of detail in your simulation which affects how quickly you will receive results.
Both novice and advanced users can also use TAITherm. A simulation could be started by one team that needs only a rough design, but then that model could be updated by an advanced simulation team to include more detail and consider additional thermal management issues. This allows teams to work together seamlessly. This also extends to creating cohesive reports. Using the thermal reports function, you can define a template containing the definition of key outputs and use it to generate the same outputs automatically for the model in each team. You can repeat thermal reports for every simulation iteration without doing the same work again.
Accurate Data for Your Decisions
It is imperative to understand the thermal management of your designs before using valuable resources to produce prototypes. If your simulation is providing you with accurate results for the models you are testing, you will only have to create a physical prototype for your optimal designs. By using a tool that can provide accurate simulations quicker, you can now test a larger amount of design iterations in less time and base critical decisions off of trusted results.
To ensure accurate results, it is important to set up your simulation with material properties and boundary conditions that are as close to your test scenario as possible. The more accurate you can be with your inputs, the closer the simulation will be to your physical tests.
TAITherm is designed for accuracy using proven physical and numerical methods and robust software testing. For example, TAITherm uses a surface-to-surface method for radiation heat transfer and a multi-grid solver when running simulations. The software is tested (both manually and automatically) to verify the behavior and accuracy based on known solutions. Because of these validated methods, TAITherm can be trusted to predict results for multiple scenarios. This allows you to simulate precisely how components will perform and react to neighboring heat sources during operation, all in a short amount of time. Using a CFD tool for the same simulation would require greater detail and take much longer to reach a solution.
Reach Your Best Designs with Transient Simulation
TAITherm is a transient solver. It can quickly provide you with a complete transient analysis to understand how your designs will perform throughout an entire real-world scenario including environmental effects. For example, you can model an automotive driving cycle completing a hill climb with various loads and quickly understand which design is best for the given scenario. Without a transient analysis, you will not have the insight into your design based on realistic use cases until late in the prototyping phase.
Simulation for Modern Engineering
Using a thermal simulation tool like TAITherm is the next-step for modern engineering teams. With features that help you solve complex coupled transient problems quickly and easily across teams, you will stay competitive by bringing the best products to market in the shortest amount of time.
