In the fourth video of our thermal management series we look at how the use of Conjugate Heat Transfer analysis, commonly referred to as CHT, may be utilised within the Ansys suite of analysis software.
In many scenarios boundary conditions may be simplified or assumed. This allows for the use of the analysis approaches discussed in the previous videos in this series however, when this is not the case, Conjugate Heat Transfer allows for a comprehensive thermal simulation approach. This may be the case for the heat distribution in a PCB when convection is present, how fluid flow impacts the performance of a furnace or any other scenario where there is interaction between flow and a solid. Conjugate Heat Transfer allows for the coupled thermal simulation of fluid and solid bodies, and therefore allows for detailed analysis with a reduced number of assumptions.
We may, however, still require mechanical assessment of the parts in consideration to identify thermal stresses and other thermo-mechanical effects. This will be the focus of the fifth video in this series; as next week we look to explore coupled analysis systems within Ansys.