Air Flow Pattern and Path Flow Simulation of Airborne Particulate Contaminants in a High-Density Data Center Utilizing Airside Economization

The percentage of the energy used by data centers for cooling their equipment has been on the rise. With that, there has been a necessity for exploring new and more efficient methods like airside economization, both from an engineering as well as business point of view, to contain this energy demand. Air cooling especially, free air cooling has always been the first choice for IT companies to cool their equipment. But, it has its downside as well. As per ASHRAE standard (2009b), the air which is entering the data center should be continuously filtered with MERV 11 or preferably MERV 13 filters and the air which is inside the data center should be clean as per ISO class 8. The objective of this study is to design a model data center and simulate the flow path with the help of 6sigma room analysis software. A high-density data center was modelled for both hot aisle and cold aisle containment configurations. The particles taken into consideration for modelling were spherical in shape and of diameters 0.05, 0.1 and 1 micron. The physical properties of the submicron particles have been assumed to be same as that of air. For heavier particles of 1 micron in size, the properties of dense carbon particle are chosen for simulating particulate contamination in a data center. The Computer Room Air Conditioning unit is modelled as the source for the particulate contaminants which represents contaminants entering along with free air through an air-side economizer. The data obtained from this analysis can be helpful in predicting which type of particles will be deposited at what location based on its distance from the source and weight of the particles. This can further help in reinforcing the regions with a potential to fail under particulate contamination.

In-Plane Pre-Stress Analysis for Automotive Airbag Electronic Control Unit’s Printed Circuit Board Transverse Vibration

For design of automotive airbag electronic control units (AB ECU), it is essential to have a validated and reliable finite element (FE) simulation model in place in order to allow already in an early design stage for the accurate prediction of the ECU’s structural vibration behavior. A “bottom-up” approach which described in the ASME guide for verification and validation (ASME V&V 10-2006) is applied for the validation of the AB ECU simulation model. The AB ECU is decomposed into different assembly level. Single printed circuit board (PCB) is the lowest elementary component level. In the PCB level simulation and validation, the influence of in-plane pre-stress on PCB’s transverse vibration characteristic has been encountered, but it has been found out that the source of the in-plane pre-stress can not be explained by classical beam/plate theory. Analysis and simulation for PCB fixation reveals that the fundamental source of the in-plane pre-stress is structure’s geometric nonlinearity.

Assessment of Damage Progression in Automotive Electronics Assemblies Subjected to Temperature and Vibration

Electronics in automotive underhood environments is used for a number of safety critical functions. Reliable continued operation of electronic safety systems without catastrophic failure is important for safe operation of the vehicle. There is need for prognostication methods, which can be integrated, with on-board sensors for assessment of accrued damage and impending failure. In this paper, leadfree electronic assemblies consisting of daisy-chained parts have been subjected to high temperature vibration at 5g and 155°C. Spectrogram has been used to identify the emergence of new low frequency components with damage progression in electronic assemblies. Principal component analysis has been used to reduce the dimensionality of large data-sets and identify patterns without the loss of features that signify damage progression and impending failure. Variance of the principal components of the instantaneous frequency has been shown to exhibit an increasing trend during the initial damage progression, attaining a maximum value and decreasing prior to failure. The unique behavior of the instantaneous frequency over the period of vibration can be used as a health-monitoring feature for identifying the impending failures in automotive electronics. Further, damage progression has been studied using Empirical Mode Decomposition (EMD) technique in order to decompose the signals into Independent Mode Functions (IMF). The IMF’s were investigated based on their kurtosis values and a reconstructed strain signal was formulated with all IMF’s greater than a kurtosis value of three. PCA analysis on the reconstructed strain signal gave better patterns that can be used for prognostication of the life of the components.

Analysis of Thermal Properties of Power Multifinger HEMT Devices

In this paper, several methods suitable for real time on-chip temperature measurements of power AlGaN/GaN based high-electron mobility transistor (HEMT) grown on SiC substrate are presented. The measurement of temperature distribution on HEMT surface using Raman spectroscopy is presented. We have deployed a temperature measurement approach utilizing electrical I-V characteristics of the neighboring Schottky diode under different dissipated power of the transistor heat source. These methods are verified by measurements with micro thermistors. The results show that these methods have a potential for HEMT analysis in thermal management. The features and limitations of the proposed methods are discussed. The thermal parameters of materials used in the device are extracted from temperature distribution in the structure with the support of 3-D device thermal simulation. The thermal analysis of the multifinger power HEMT is performed. The effects of the structure design and fabrication processes from semiconductor layers, metallization, and packaging up to cooling solutions are investigated. The analysis of thermal behavior can help during design and optimization of power HEMT.

Design and Calibration of Resistive Stress Sensors on 4H Silicon Carbide

Stress sensors have shown potential to provide “health monitoring” of a wide range of issues related to packaging of integrated circuits, and silicon carbide offers the advantage of much higher temperature sensor operation with application in packaged high-voltage, high-power SiC devices as well as both automotive and aerospace systems, geothermal plants, and deep well drilling, to name a few. This paper discusses the theory and uniaxial calibration of resistive stress sensors on 4H silicon carbide (4H-SiC) and provides new theoretical descriptions for four-element resistor rosettes and van der Pauw (VDP) stress sensors. The results delineate the similarities and differences relative to those on (100) silicon: resistors on the silicon face of 4H-SiC respond to only four of the six components of the stress state; a four-element rosette design exists for measuring the in-plane stress components; two stress quantities can be measured in a temperature compensated manner. In contrast to silicon, only one combined coefficient is required for temperature compensated stress measurements. Calibration results from a single VDP device can be used to calculate the basic lateral and transverse piezoresistance coefficients for 4H-SiC material. Experimental results are presented for lateral and transverse piezoresistive coefficients for van der Pauw structures and p- and n-type resistors. The VDP devices exhibit the expected 3.16 times higher stress sensitivity than standard resistor rosettes.

Heat Transfer Characteristics and Flow Pattern Visualization for Flow Boiling in a Vertical Narrow Microchannel

For improving the functionality and signal speed of electronic devices, electronic components have been miniaturized and an increasing number of elements have been packaged in the device. As a result there has been a steady rise in the amount of heat necessitated to be dissipated from the electronic device. Recently microchannel heat sinks have been emerged as a kind of high performance cooling scheme to meet the heat dissipation requirement of electronics packaging, In the present study an experimental study of subcooled flow boiling in a high-aspect-ratio, one-sided heating rectangular microchannel with gap depth of 0.52 mm and width of 5 mm was conducted with deionized water as the working fluid. In the experimental operations, the mass flux was varied from 200 to 400 kg/m2s and imposed heat flux from 3 to 20 W/cm2 while the fluid inlet temperature was regulated constantly at 90 °C. The boiling curves, flow pattern and onset of nucleate boiling of subcooled flow boiling were investigated through instrumental measurements and a high speed camera. It was found that the slope of the boiling curves increased sharply once the superheat needed to initiate the onset of nucleate boiling was attained, and the slope was greater for lower mass fluxes, with lower superheat required for boiling incipience. As for the visualization images, for relatively lower mass fluxes the bubbles generated were larger and not easy to depart from the vertical upward placed narrow microchannel wall, giving elongated bubbly flow and reverse backflow. The thin film evaporation mechanism dominated the entire test section due to the elongated bubbles and transient local dryout as well as rewetting occurred. Meanwhile the initiative superheat and heat flux of onset of nucleate boiling were compared with existing correlations in the literature with good agreement.

Waste Heat Recovery for Powering Mobile Devices Using Thermoelectric Generators and Evaporatively-Cooled Heat Sink

Powering small electronics like mobile devices off-grid has remained a challenge; hence, there exists a need for an alternate source of powering these devices. This paper examines the efficacy of a novel nanoparticle-immobilized polyethylene wick in maintaining sufficient thermal gradient across a thermoelectric generator to power these devices with energy from waste heat. The work examines several other heat exchangers including heat pipes and loop heat pipe setups. The experimental evidence reveals that the nanoparticle-immobilized polyethylene wick is capable of generating sufficient thermal potential resulting in 5V, which is the minimum voltage required to power small mobile devices. In the opinion of the authors, this is the first ever recorded account of utilizing waste heat to generate enough voltage to power a mobile device. Experiment demonstrated that the nanoparticle-immobilized polyethylene wick showed over 40% thermoelectric voltage generation increment over a plain polyethylene wick and a metal wick in a loop heat pipe setup.

Reduced Working Temperature of Quantum Dots-Light-Emitting Diodes Optimized by QDs@Silica-on-Chip Structure

White light-emitting diodes (WLEDs) composed of blue LED chip, yellow phosphor, and red quantum dots (QDs) are considered as a potential alternative for next-generation artificial light source with their high luminous efficiency (LE) and color-rendering index (CRI). While, QDs’ poor temperature stability and the incompatibility of QDs/silicone severely hinder the wide utilization of QDs-WLEDs. To relieve this, here we proposed a separated QSNs/phosphor structure, which composed of a QSNs-on-chip layer with a yellow phosphor layer above. A silica shell was coated onto the QDs surface to solve the compatibility problem between QDs and silicone. With CRI > 92 and R9 > 90, the newly proposed QDs@silica nanoparticles (QSNs) based WLEDs present 16.7 % higher LE and lower QDs working temperature over conventional mixed type WLEDs. The reduction of QDs’ temperature can reach 11.5 °C, 21.3 °C and 30.3 °C at driving current of 80 mA, 200 mA and 300 mA, respectively.

Viscoplastic Constitutive Model for High Strain Rate Mechanical Properties of SAC-Q Leadfree Solder After High-Temperature Prolonged Storage

Electronics in automotive underhood and downhole drilling applications may be subjected to sustained operation at high temperature in addition to high strain-rate loads. SAC solders used for second level interconnects have been shown to experience degradation in high strain-rate mechanical properties under sustained exposure to high temperatures. Industry search for solutions for resisting the high-temperature degradation of SAC solders has focused on the addition of dopants to the alloy. In this study, a doped SAC solder called SAC-Q solder have been studied. The high strain rate mechanical properties of SAC-Q solder have been studied under elevated temperatures up to 200°C. Samples with thermal aging at 50°C for up to 6-months have been used for measurements in uniaxial tensile tests. Measurements for SAC-Q have been compared to SAC105 and SAC305 for identical test conditions and sample geometry. Data from the SAC-Q measurements has been fit to the Anand Viscoplasticity model. In order to assess the predictive power of the model, the computed Anand parameters have been used to simulate the uniaxial tensile test and the model predictions compared with experimental data. Model predictions show good correlation with experimental measurements. The presented approach extends the Anand Model to include thermal aging effects.

Experimental and Numerical Investigation of Underfill Materials on Thermal Cycle Fatigue of Second Level Solder Interconnects Under Mean Temperature Conditions

With the larger size of Ball Grid Array (BGA) solder joints, the available volume for underfilling is significantly increased. Although the size of the solder joints and package dimension governs the volume of underfill material, the larger 2nd level solder interconnects are more susceptible to thermal fatigue with certain underfills and thermal profiles. In this study, BGA packages were underfilled with two dedicated underfill materials and two soft materials used as conformal coatings and encapsulants in electronic products. Each of the selected materials was subjected to two thermal profiles, one with low mean temperature and a second with a high mean temperature. The variation in mean cyclic temperature demonstrates the influence of temperature dependent behavior of each underfill material on the loads solder joints experience in a BGA package. Material characterization was performed on the package and underfill materials and incorporated into finite element models. The influence of underfill material glass transition temperature (Tg) was found to be a critical factor on fatigue endurance of solder interconnects. Fatigue crack orientation within solder joints were found to be aligned with axial (normal) direction for BGAs with high CTE underfill materials. Simulations determined the magnitude of axial loading associated with each underfill material properties responsible for reducing fatigue life. The results developed in this paper reveal the factors associated with reduced fatigue endurance of certain underfill materials under temperature profiles with mean temperature conditions and contribute to the development of new criteria of underfill material selection for 2nd level interconnects.