ANSYS Icepak Product Features

Model Building
Powerful Fluid Dynamics Software for Thermal • Predefined objects
Management of Electronic Systems – Cabinets, fans, blowers, printed
Leading companies around the world trust ANSYS® Icepak® software to circuit boards, packages, grilles,
provide robust and powerful computational fluid dynamics technology openings, plates, walls, ducts,
for electronics thermal management. In today’s electronic devices, sources, resistances, blocks,
power requirements and smaller footprints require superior thermal compact and detailed heat sinks
designs. Overheating of electronic components degrades product • Object shapes
performance and reliability, which results in costly redesigns. To – Blocks, cylinders, ellipsoids,
ensure the adequate cooling of IC packages, printed circuit boards and elliptical cylinders, concentric
complete electronic systems, engineers rely on ANSYS Icepak software
cylinders, and prisms
to validate their thermal designs before building any hardware. ANSYS
• Direct CAD representation of
Icepak combines advanced solver technology with robust, automatic
components
meshing to enable engineers to rapidly perform heat transfer and
• Rectangular or circular fans
fluid flow simulation for a wide variety of electronic applications
including computers, telecommunications equipment, semiconductor with hubs, guards and power
devices, aerospace, automotive and consumer electronics. specifications
• Thermal network modeling
Rapid Thermal Simulation for Electronic Systems – Packages, heat exchangers, heat
ANSYS Icepak contains a streamlined user interface that allows users to pipes and cold plates
quickly create and simulate electronics cooling models of IC packages, • Object libraries
printed circuit boards and complete electronic systems. Electronics – Fans, heat sinks, thermoelectric
cooling models are created by simply dragging and dropping icons coolers, filters, packages and user
of familiar predefined objects — cabinets, fans, packages, printed defined libraries
circuit boards, grilles, heat sinks, etc. — to create models of complete • Comprehensive solid and fluid
electronic systems. These smart objects capture geometric information, material property database
material properties, meshing parameters and boundary conditions • Flexible and customizable units
— all of which can be parametric for performing sensitivity studies • Parametric geometry and boundary
and optimizing designs. ANSYS Icepak contains extensive libraries of conditions
standard electronic components that can be used to further accelerate – User-defined trials
the development of thermal designs. – Design optimization with ANSYS
Iceopt
Accurate Thermal Analysis for Printed Circuit Boards
• Import/export geometry to spread
With ANSYS Icepak, users can import electronic CAD data from
sheets
popular EDA layout tools for thermal simulation of printed circuit
• Model summaries in HTML format
boards. Board dimensions, component layout information, and
• User-defined macros for model
creation

Electronic and Mechanical

CAD Import
• IDF import for PCB layout
• MCM/BRD import for PCB traces
and vias
• MCM import for packages
Multi-level hex-dominant • Ansoft neutral file (ANF) import
mesh (“hanging-node”) • Gerber import with ANSYS Icegrb
Cut-plane velocity vectors and on a sheet metal heat sink • Cadence, Mentor Graphics, Synopsys
temperature contours for a fan-cooled represented directly as CAD and Zuken import with AnsoftLinks
rack-mounted computer geometry
Product Features electronic trace and via information can all be imported into a thermal
simulation. Using the trace and via information, a detailed thermal
• IGES, STEP conductivity map of the board can be computed based on the copper
• ANSYS® DesignModeler™ export to content of the board layers. This allows the engineer to accurately
ANSYS Icepak objects represent the orthotropic thermal material properties of the board,
• Support for ANSYS Geometry Interfaces which provides an increased fidelity in the prediction of the internal
with ANSYS DesignModeler temperatures and component junction temperatures. Resistive heating
in the individual traces carrying significant current can be modeled to
Automatic Mesh Generation further increase the accuracy of simulations.
• Automatic hex-dominant meshing for
true geometry representation
– Automatic multi-level meshing
– 2-D and 3-D cut cell techniques
– Automatic non-conformal regions
– Robust meshing of CAD geometry
• Unstructured hexahedral meshing
• Cartesian meshing
• Non-conformal regions
• Embedded non-conformal meshing
• Extruded meshes for packages and
Multi-level hex-dominant mesh Temperature contours on a 272-pin
boards
(“hanging-node”) of a heat sink ball grid array (BGA) package on a
• Coarse mesh option for first-pass analysis
and fan assembly represented substrate
• Mesh quality evaluation tools
directly as a CAD geometry
Boundary Conditions
• Temperature, heat flux, convective heat Detailed and Compact Thermal Models for IC Packages
transfer coefficient, radiation, symmetry ANSYS Icepak includes options for both detailed and compact thermal
and periodic boundary conditions for modeling of IC packages. Based on electronic CAD data from EDA
walls and surfaces layout tools, users can import information such as substrate traces
• Inlet and outlet velocity, mass flow rate, and vias, bond wires, solder bumps, die dimensions and solder balls
outlet static pressure, inlet total pressure, into a detailed thermal model of an IC package. Using the substrate
trace and via information, detailed thermal conductivity maps for
inlet temperature and turbulence
the package substrate can be developed to accurately represent the
parameters for openings and vents
orthotropic thermal material properties of the substrate. From a
• Profiles of velocity, temperature, heat
detailed package model, ANSYS Icepak contains an automated process
flux and heat transfer coefficients on
for DELPHI package characterization (JEDEC compliant). The optimized
openings and walls DELPHI network model can easily be included in a system-level thermal
• Grilles and resistances with automatic simulation, which allows the engineer to accurately predict junction
loss coefficient based on free area ratio temperatures of IC components.
• Fans with options for mass flow rate or
fan performance curve Flexible Automatic Meshing Technology
• Rotational speed for cylindrical and ANSYS Icepak contains advanced meshing algorithms to automatically
circular objects generate high-quality grids that represent the true shape of electronic
• Recirculating boundary conditions for components. Options include hex-dominant, unstructured hexahedral
external heat exchangers and Cartesian meshing, which enable the engineer to automatically
• Time-dependent and enhanced generate body-fitted meshes with minimal intervention. The user can
temperature-dependent sources localize the mesh density through nonconformal mesh interfaces,
• Time-varying ambient temperature which allows the inclusion of a variety of component scales within the
• Automatic correlation-based heat same electronics cooling model. While fully automated, ANSYS Icepak
transfer coefficient boundary conditions also contains many mesh controls that enable the customization
• Time-dependent pressure of meshing parameters to refine the mesh and optimize trade-offs
• Electric current and voltage between computational cost and solution accuracy. The meshing
• Power map import from IC package and flexibility of ANSYS Icepak offers the fastest solution times possible
PCB design tools without compromising solution accuracy.
• Transient boundary condition import
from spreadsheets
Robust and Rapid Numerical Solutions Product Features
ANSYS Icepak uses state-of-the-art technology available in the
ANSYS® FLUENT® computational fluid dynamics (CFD) solver for the Comprehensive Thermal Flow Modeling
thermal and fluid-flow calculations. ANSYS Icepak solves fluid flow • Steady-state or transient analysis
and includes all modes of heat transfer - conduction, convection • Laminar or turbulent flows
and radiation - for both steady-state and transient thermal-flow – Laminar regions in turbulent models
simulations. The solver uses a multi-grid scheme to accelerate solution • Forced, natural and mixed convection
convergence for conjugate heat transfer problems. The ANSYS Icepak • Conduction in solids
solver provides complete mesh flexibility, and allows users to solve • Conjugate heat transfer
even the most complex electronic assemblies using unstructured • Radiation heat transfer
meshes, providing robust and extremely fast solution times.
– Surface-to-surface radiation
– Discrete-ordinates radiation
– Ray tracing radiation
– Solar loading
• Volumetric resistances and sources for
velocity and energy
• Joule heating in traces and conductors
• Thermal network modeling

Advanced Physical Models

• Zero-equation turbulence model
• Two-equation k-ε turbulence model
• RNG k-ε turbulence model
• Realizable k-ε turbulence model
Detailed thermal conductivity map for an IC package substrate layer • Spalart-Allmaras turbulence model
computed based on the electronic trace and via information • Ideal gas law
• Anisotropic thermal conductivity for
Results Visualization and Reporting
solids
For post-processing, ANSYS Icepak contains a full suite of qualitative
and quantitative tools to generate meaningful graphics, animations • Temperature-dependent materials
and reports. These can be used to easily convey simulation results • Contact resistance models
to colleagues and customers. Visualization of velocity vectors, • Non-isotropic volumetric flow resistance
temperature contours, fluid particle traces, iso-surface displays, • Nonlinear fan curves
cut-planes and XY plots of results data are all available for use in • Moving reference frame (MRF) fan
interpreting the results of electronics cooling simulations. Customized • Automatic radiation view factor
reports, including images, can be automatically created for distributing computation
results data, identifying trends in the simulation, and reporting fan • Two-resistor, star and DELPHI network
and blower operating points. ANSYS Icepak includes ANSYS CFD-Post models for IC packages
software for further post-processing of your results with advanced
post-processing, graphics and animation tools. Solver Attributes
• ANSYS FLUENT technology
Interfaces to Electrical and Mechanical Simulation – Robust convergence for laminar and
ANSYS Icepak provides interfaces to SIwave™ and ANSYS® turbulent flows
Mechanical™ products, thus providing access to a full suite of tools • First-order upwind or higher-order
to address electrical, thermal and structural simulation requirements. scheme
Based on an SIwave analysis, the DC power distribution profile • Automatic under relaxation
can be imported into ANSYS Icepak to account for heating due to • Advanced stabilization methods
copper resistive losses. The coupling between SIwave and ANSYS
• Variable time stepping for transients
Icepak enables users to predict
• Parallel solver available with ANSYS HPC
both internal temperatures and
• Batch queuing
accurate component junction
• Graphical convergence monitoring
temperatures for printed circuit
boards and packages. Following
Velocity vectors for a heat sink-fan
assembly, fan modeled using moving
reference frame (MRF) fan model,
image created using ANSYS CFD-Post

R ELEASE 1 3 .0
Product Features an ANSYS Icepak simulation, a user can export the temperatures
from a thermal flow simulation into ANSYS Mechanical using the
Results Visualization and Reporting ANSYS® Workbench™ platform. The coupling between ANSYS Icepak
• Interactive, object-based visualization and ANSYS Mechanical enables the evaluation of temperatures and
of results resulting thermal stresses of electronic components via an integrated
• Contour and vector displays, cut planes, set of software tools.
particle traces and iso-surfaces Electric potential
• Point probes with XY plotting contours on a printed
• Animation of particle traces circuit board trace,
• Animation of vectors, contours electronic trace
and cut planes information imported
• Point objects from electronic CAD
– Solution convergence monitoring,
post-processing, and reports
• Report generation
– Solution overview
– Trials report and plots Velocity streamlines colored by fan
– Power and temperature limits for a card array in a VME format box
– Fan and blower operating points cooled by three axial fans, image
• Time history displays created using ANSYS CFD-Post
• Export results to ANSYS CFD-Post
• Export temperature data to ANSYS
Mechanical
Online Help and Documentation
• Context-sensitive help
• Tutorials and validation examples
The ANSYS Advantage
Supported Hardware* With the unequalled depth and unparalleled breadth of ANSYS
• HP-UX 11i v2 (B.11.23) 64-bit engineering simulation solutions, companies are transforming their
• Linux Redhat (5), Suse Linux ES (10,11) leading-edge design concepts into innovative products and processes
32-bit that work. Today, almost all of the top 100 industrial companies on the
• Linux Redhat (5), Suse (11) 64-bit “FORTUNE Global 500” invest in engineering simulation as a key strat-
• Windows 7, XP, 2008 Server, Vista 32-bit egy to win in a globally competitive environment. They choose ANSYS
• Windows 7, XP, 2008 Server, 2008 Server as their simulation partner, deploying the world’s most comprehensive
(HPC), Vista 64-bit multi-physics solutions to solve their complex engineering challenges.
Additional Modules The engineered scalability of solutions from ANSYS delivers the flexibil-
• ANSYS HPC ity customers need, within an architecture that is adaptable to the pro-
• ANSYS DesignModeler cesses and design systems of their choice. No wonder the world’s most
• ANSYS Geometry Interfaces successful companies turn to ANSYS — with a track record of 40 years as
• AnsoftLinks the industry leader — for the best in engineering simulation.
• ANSYS Iceopt
• ANSYS Icegrb
* Refer to www.ansys.com for a current list of
supported hardware and operating systems

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