FloCAD

Ansys Sherlock is the only reliability physics-based electronics design tool that provides fast and accurate life predictions for electronic hardware at the component, board and system levels in early stage design. Ansys Sherlock automated design analysis provides fast and accurate life predictions for electronic hardware at the component, board and system levels in early design stages. Sherlock bypasses the ‘test-fail-fix-repeat’ cycle by empowering designers to accurately model silicon–metal layers, semiconductor packaging, printed circuit boards (PCBs) and assemblies to predict failure risks due to thermal, mechanical and manufacturing stressors--all before prototype. With embedded libraries containing over 500,000 parts, Sherlock rapidly converts electronic computer-aided design (ECAD) files into computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and finite element analysis (FEA) models. Each model contains accurate geometries, material properties and translates stress information.

An ultra-fast, oct-tree accelerated Monte-Carlo ray tracing algorithm is used by RadCAD to compute radiation exchange factors and view factors. Innovations by C&R Technologies to the ray tracing process have resulted in an extremely efficient thermal radiation software tool. Using finite difference "conics" (simple geometric objects) or curved finite elements from TD Direct®, RadCAD can accurately model diffuse or specular reflections and transmissive surfaces regardless of node density. The needs of the thermal solution dictate the number of nodes, not the accuracy requirements of the radiation. RadCAD makes use of user-defined databases of optical properties. Each surface coating defines absorptivity, transmissivity, and reflectivity along with specularity in both the solar and infrared wavelength regimes. These properties can be defined versus incident angle or even with wavelength dependence.