THERMAL MANAGEMENT

# Thermal Management

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 Date Published: August 21, 2013 Last Modified: August 21, 2013

## Thermal Resistance

Thermal resistance is way of modelling the thermal behaviour of an object in a way analogous to calculating the current through a resistor by measuring it’s voltage.

The equation is given by:

$$P_D = \frac{\Delta T}{\sum R_\theta}$$

where:
$$P_D$$ = Power dissipated by device ($$W$$)
$$\Delta T$$ = Change in temperature between both end-points
$$\sum R_{\theta}$$ = The sum of thermal resistances over which $$\Delta T$$ exists

Which is usually expanded (and used) as:

$$P_D = \frac{T_J - T_A}{R_{JC} + R_{CA}}$$

If there is a heatsink involved, a new term is added:

$$P_D = \frac{T_J - T_A}{R_{JC} + R_{CH} + R_{HA}}$$

An analogy to electrical resistance…

## Inaccuracies In The Thermal Resistance Model

• Thermal resistances assume a linear relationship between temperature and heat flow. This is only a first-order approximation.

## List Of Component Package Thermal Resistances

See the Component Packages page. This has many of the common component packages and their thermal resistances.

Below is a condensed list of experimentally found internal thermal resistances (junction-to-case).

## Authors

### Geoffrey Hunter

Dude making stuff.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License .

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