Reliability, Thermal and Power Management
Reliability is surely one of the most important aspects the customer look at when buying an electronic device.
As earlier mentioned, SOLAR is equipped with a very powerful LED array that generates a significant amount of heat. It is well known that LED lifetime decreases with the temperature. Moreover, the spectral power distribution of LEDs is a function of the working temperature. Thus, thermal management was a crucial point in the design of SOLAR in order to respect the LED specifications and to guarantee the uniformity of brightness and colorimetric values on the panel and along the time.
By the use of the most sophisticated thermal simulation tools our engineers designed SOLAR so that the heat, generated when LEDs are on, follows a longitudinal trajectory toward the heat sink in order to be dissipated by air flow, and a transversal trajectory (spreading) in order to have a uniformity of temperature.
The goal was obtained coupling the mechanical design of the heat sink and the analysis of the thermal interface materials. The heat sink allows both to dissipate generally the heat generated by LEDs and to the air flow to cool directly the more critical areas. The interface materials were choice following the idea that in thermal transfer “faster is more efficient”. The aim was to select the thermal interface by which the heat is able to pass through from the LED board to the heat sink most fastly.
