Laird has launched a comprehensive thermal management tool that helps engineers quickly select the optimum solution for their application. The Web-based Thermal Wizard employs proprietary application calculators to determine the optimal thermal management solutions at the thermoelectric module, thermoelectric assembly or liquid cooling system level. Building upon Laird’s popular AZTEC thermoelectric module (TEM) simulation software, the Thermal Wizard enables thermal designers to input their known cooling requirement (Qc). If the cooling requirement is unknown, the Thermal Wizard can calculate the Qc based on the defined application: device cooling, enclosure cooling, air cooling, or liquid cooling.

“Thermoelectrics is a super-nichy business and many engineers don’t know where to start when they set about to understand the attributes of their heat-load requirements. They aren’t thermal experts,” explains Andrew Dereka, Laird Product Director, “The Thermal Wizard helps the customer to get to the requirements quickly, provide recommendations, and then fine-tune their requirements even more, if desired. This eliminates the manual process of pouring through data sheets, math calculations, and recommendations not only on the TEM level but the assembly level, as well.”

The Wizard enables easy comparison for integration into customer applications and also provides quick access to product availability, request-for-quotation form, and how to order samples. Once a standard product series is selected, the thermal designer has access to multiple input fields for fine tuning electrical and thermal performance curves to produce the optimum solution. If a standard solution doesn’t exactly match an application requirement, the Thermal Wizard captures the user’s requirements to enable the customization of a standard product or to request a custom solution from Laird’s thermal experts.

“Selecting the right thermal solution for a particular application can be a long and difficult process for a thermal engineer, one that requires many technological and financial trade-offs,” explained Laird’s Senior Vice President of Thermal Systems Anders Kottenauer. “In order to speed-up and simplify this process, Laird developed the Thermal Wizard to serve as a virtual thermal management assistant so that thermal decisions can be made faster and more accurately. The Thermal Wizard does the heavy lifting, sorting through the data and calculating the performance, leaving the decisions to the designer,” Kottenauer concluded.

The Thermal Wizard is available online at the Laird website.