Determining the actual heat dissipation of your product could be very time consuming. It would involve, in part, knowing the electrical efficiency of all components used. Because all components deviate from their ideal models, some of the electrical energy that passes through them is converted to heat. But for each component, it is a different amount of 'waste.'
You could go through a rough analytical guess of determining the largest power consuming components and make a stab at their efficiencies and add them up. You could go through a rough empirical test measuring temperature rise of ambient air around your equipment in a controlled chamber. Often this number is used by your customers so they can calculate how much cooling they need to maintain your recommended ambient temperature conditions. In this case the number can be whatever 'the market will bear'. That is, it sort of acts as the statement "We promise our equipment won't load your cooling system at a rate greater than X Btu/hour" In this case it does matter what your equipment actually does as long as it is not perceived to exceed that limit. In this light it is likely that someone at your company made an educated empirical or analytical guess at the maximum foreseeable heat dissipation of one product and realized it would not significantly change (significant in the eyes of your market) from product to product, and hence the same number is always used. It is a number your customers can use to model cost of ownership of your product. -Lauren Crane Eaton Corporation > -----Original Message----- > From: [email protected] [SMTP:[email protected]] > Sent: Tuesday, April 27, 1999 10:47 AM > To: [email protected] > Subject: Heat Calculation > > Hello, > > Does anyone know how to compute heat dissipation for a product given mains > power input (volts, amps, watts)? > > Our spec sheets always list heat dissipation (e.g. 1,000 BTU/hour) for > each product and I wonder where the number comes from and why it never > changes from one product to the next. > > Thanks for any comments received. > > Scott > [email protected] > > > --------- > This message is coming from the emc-pstc discussion list. > To cancel your subscription, send mail to [email protected] > with the single line: "unsubscribe emc-pstc" (without the > quotes). For help, send mail to [email protected], > [email protected], [email protected], or > [email protected] (the list administrators). --------- This message is coming from the emc-pstc discussion list. To cancel your subscription, send mail to [email protected] with the single line: "unsubscribe emc-pstc" (without the quotes). For help, send mail to [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], or [email protected] (the list administrators).
