>From: Alan Fletcher >Sent: Sunday, June 02, 2013 12:27 PM >Subject: Re: [Vo]:Caveats to using SPICE for thermal analysis > >David has been concentrating on the control aspects, I have been doing RC >modelling similar to that described in your very >helpful paper. > >I did a detailed mesh model of a heat exchanger ... but gave it up because it >was too sensitive to the parameter for heat >transfer from water to metal. > >See http://lenr.qumbu.com/rossi_ecat_oct11_c.php and >http://lenr.qumbu.com/rossi_ecat_oct11_spice.php > >I'm now working on an RC model of the eCat .. progressing from a lumped model >to a ladder model.
Wow, I'm pretty impressed Alan, I don't think I've ever seen that a thermal SPICE model of such complexity. Most of the significant thermal analysis work I've been involved with has been done by MEs using dedicated FEA applications, and the SPICE modeling was typically used only by EEs for heat-sink selections and other random little tasks. I think about two or three dozen elements is the most I've seen actually used for thermal modeling before. Have you looked around at any open-source FEA tools that might be used for your project? If there are any decent ones, I suspect they'd lighten your workload considerably as compared SPICE, but I'm not familiar with what's actually available, so this is just speculation. Anyhow, best of luck with your efforts, and thanks for sharing. -Robert
