Appendix A. Thermal Analysis
and Design
187
Proper thermal design is essential to the overall design of a power supply.
Overdissipation failures account for probably the largest portion of the failures.
Therefore, it is essential that the designer understands its basic principles.
Thermal analysis is really no more difficult than Ohm’s Law. There are similar
parameters to voltage, resistance, nodes, and branches. For the majority of elec-
tronic applications, the thermal “circuit” models are quite elementary and if
enough is known of the thermal system, values can be calculated in a matter of
minutes. If one has a temperature-measuring probe, the thermal ...