|
There's a good chance that your LED board is overdesigned.
Here's why: if you are using an Rja (junction-to-ambient thermal
resistance) from a datasheet, that value probably applies for a single layer
board. But most boards are multilayer, so your LED board is cooler than
you expect. As you can see from the figure, internal ground and power
planes have a big impact:
Single layer board vs. multilayer board
There are many other factors that affect cooling. Component spacing is also
important, as you can see from this comparison:
Spacing affects LED temperatures
The Sauna thermal simulation program lets you
accurately predict temperatures for your LED board, with the correct
number of layers, thermal vias and exact component placement. In this
way you will avoid wasteful overdesign, while ensuring that
cooling is adequate to achieve your reliability goals.
Sauna's library includes 40 standard LED packages, covering a wide range of
automotive, industrial and consumer lighting applications (user-defined
packages are also possible). And Sauna is more than just a board modeling
program. You can also model boards bonded to heat sinks or within an
enclosure. Transient and duty cycle problems can also be handled.
And these great features are available at a moderate
price.
Easily model a variety of LED components and configurations
The next step
The best way to learn about the Sauna program is to try the free
evaluation package. You can request the evaluation package
here.
If you want additional information on Sauna features, try one of
these links:
|