Abstract
A user-friendliness and powerful thermal CAD system, which is composed of pre-processor subsystem, thermal network analyzer and post-processor subsystem, for 133MHz notebook computers has been developed on Microsoft Windows system in the present research. The pre-processor subsystem including model generation, input data file generation, and display of photos and design drawings for 133 MHz notebook computers provides a friendly user-interface for designers. For the design of thermal analyzer, a concept of exterior-interior thermal analysis presented by Liou (1989) is employed in the present developed thermal analyzer. Six thermal models have been built in the developed thermal CAD system for performing the thermal design of 133 MHz notebook computers at different analysis levels. Besides, an improved algorithm for drawing isotherms is also employed in the developed post-processor. By using the algorithm of image composition, the composite color isotherms with the PCB photos or layouts can be satisfactorily obtained with an excellent quality. With this developed thermal CAD system, several practical thermal design cases for 133 MHz notebook computers have been performed. A series of parametric studies have also been explored. The detailed thermal behavior of 133MHz notebook computers has been accurately predicted with the present developed thermal analyzer. The superiority of the developed CAD system has been demonstrated.