The innovation consortium IN SPE has received 12 mill DK kr. from the Danish Council for Technology and Innovation for the development of innovative designs and methods for electronics enclosures that will improve the reliability. The consortium will develop innovative design solutions for microclimate control inside electronic devices based on the research to solve the problems the industry experiences today concerning humidity related corrosion problems in electronics. The consortium is a collaboration between researchers at DTU Mechanical Engineering and Danfoss, Vestas, Grundfos, Eltek, DELTA, IPU and Michigan State University, and has a total budget of 24 mill DK kr.
Micro climate and control of humidity in electronics
Electronic devices such as control systems, inverters and other electronics are used worldwide and are exposed to different and rapidly changing climatic conditions. When the humidity is high, thin layers of moisture forms inside the cabinets that are supposed to protect the electronics and this can cause short circuits and a general loss of reliability. Therefore it is of great importance that it is possible to understand and control the micro climate formation inside the cabinets, and here the design of the cabinet is of vital importance.
Today no design strategy exists and available knowledge and solutions are inadequate.
Adapting electronic solutions to climatic conditions
The manufacturing of electronics make up a large part of the Danish industrial production, and many products are exported to countries where they will be required to function in a climate with a high humidity. The solutions from IN SPE will create more climatically reliable electronic device design compatible for even difficult climatic conditions. This will provide new opportunities for the industry to export products which will be able to function in a stable and reliable way in the tropical or subtropical climatic conditions in fx. India, China, Indonesia and South America, areas with rapidly growing economies.
Innovation and cooperation with the industry
The innovation consortium IN SPE will develop new solutions to the design of cabinets for electronics, a design that today is developed on the basis of the experience of manufacturers and not on basis of scientific insight. Among other things, the researchers of IN SPE will develop optimized modelling tools fully supported by the empirical data to simulate how specific changes of the design will influence the ability to control humidity. IN SPE will also develop new energy saving solutions to keep the internal, local humidity at an acceptable level.
Professor Rajan Ambat from DTU Mechanical Engineering is head of IN SPE and states that: “The innovative approach of IN SPE will radically change the today’s trial and error and experience based electronic enclosure/device design not rooted on knowledge on climatic aspects to a scientific methodology created on the basis of detailed empirical knowledge and semi-empirical model based optimization tools. The possibility of achieving optimized designs without time consuming physical trials will allow electronic industries to easily tune their device design for expected climatic conditions. Industrial benefit of IN SPE is expected to be huge due to the possibility of embedding “Design for Reliability (DFR)” in products to be sold worldwide”.
IN SPE is financed by the Danish Council for Technology and Innovation and the Danish Agency for Science, Technology and Innovation.
A poor control of the micro climate inside the cabinet will result in damaged electronics.