Thermal Design Considerations for SMD PCBs

Keven Coates

Senior Electrical Engineer

Thermal design considerations

Learn the basics of heat management in SMD PCB design in this 45-minute webinar that will give you thermal design considerations. Heat management is physics. Heat in = heat out. You’ll learn what’s important in heat management and overall methodologies to reduce temperatures. Find out how heat spreads and how to use those methods to make component temperatures cooler.  We’ll show some experiments that detail temperature vs wattage levels vs area, and a number of ways to reduce temperatures by spreading out the heat so the wattage isn’t concentrated in one little area. Learn SMD PCB layout techniques that show how to use free copper to spread the heat without adding PCB cost. Sometimes that alone can resolve the issues. We’ll also cover what wattage levels require what methods to keep heat within acceptable levels.

What you’ll learn:

•Why do we care about temperature?
•A word about physics
•Heat in = Heat out
•Basics of heat transfer
•Heat vs area
•Spread it out! (the key to thermal management)
•Semiconductor construction and heat
•PCB techniques to spread heat (free heat spreading!)
•Practical thermal guidelines

About Keven Coates

Keven Coates career spans 30 years of embedded processor digital/analog systems, high speed PCB layout/signal integrity, very low noise circuits, high power circuits, thermal management, battery safety, battery management, and battery interface circuits for consumer, industrial and automotive designs. He’s currently a senior electrical engineer at Fluidity Technologies working on 2-person electric vertical take-off aircraft. He holds a bachelor’s degree from Texas A&M University.