Ansys Icepak
Cooling Simulation Software for Electronic Components

Ansys Icepak is a CFD solver for electronics thermal management. It predicts airflow, temperature and heat transfer in IC packages, PCBs, electronic assemblies/enclosures and power electronics.

Electronics Cooling & PCB Thermal Simulation and Analysis

Ansys Icepak provides powerful electronic cooling solutions that utilize the industry leading Ansys Fluent computational fluid dynamics (CFD) solver for thermal and fluid flow analyses of integrated circuits (ICs), packages, printed circuit boards (PCBs) and electronic assemblies. The Ansys Icepak CFD solver uses the Ansys Electronics Desktop (AEDT) graphical user interface (GUI).

Unstructured, Body-fitted Meshing
Comprehensive Thermal Reliability Solution
High-fidelity CFD Solver
Industry Leading Multiscale Multiphysics

Perform Quick Thermal Analysis of Electromagnetic Designs — Watch video

Product Specs

Perform conduction, convection and radiation conjugate heat transfer analyses, with many advanced capabilities to model laminar and turbulent flows, and species analysis including radiation and convection.

MCAD and ECAD Support
Solar radiation
Parametrics and Optimization
Customization and Automation

Network Modeling
DC Joule Heating Analysis
Electro-thermal and Thermo-Mechanical
Extensive Libraries for Thermal

Liquid Cooling
Dynamic Thermal Management
Varying Flow and Power ROM

Ruggedized Systems: Cool and Collected

Kontron uses sophisticated thermal simulation to balance size, weight, power and cooling (SWaP-C) for ‘ruggedized’ modular chassis.

"Kontron can avoid potential problems, adapt to their customers’ needs and provide rugged, reliable systems for the connected U.S. Army of the present and the future."

Read the Story

Today’s military vehicles depend on state-of-the-art visualization, imaging and networking technologies to improve situational awareness and enable military leaders to make the best possible decisions. Vehicles such as Humvees, armored mine-resistant ambush protected vehicles (MRAPs) and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) rely on advanced electronics in compact systems to support their critical missions.

The devices placed on vehicles such as battlefield sensor systems, military GPS and next generation communications equipment must be able to communicate and interact in extreme physical environments where they might be exposed to severe electromagnetic conditions. Military standards require that these devices withstand specified extremes of temperature, vibration, shock, salt spray, sand and chemical exposure. Size, weight, power and cooling (SWAP-C) requirements demand that the electronic systems that power these devices be small enough that they do not hinder mobility.

July 2021

What's New

Ansys 2021 R2 introduces significant improvements to electronics thermal management analyses. From native Joule heating to significant improvements in MCAD geometry handling, mesh and solution processing lead to productivity gains for Ansys Icepak. These improvements will enable thermal engineers to solve complex system-level problems with faster turn-around-times. Register for the update to learn more.

Joule Heating Analysis

Embedded Joule heating analysis gives you the ability to solve tightly coupled electrical conduction and thermal domains simultaneously. You can include thermal sources and loads as well as electrical voltage and current excitations.

Reduced-Order Model

New Linear Parameter Varying Reduced-Order Model (LPV ROM) support includes a simple toolkit to setup and conduct parametric runs for training design points. LPV ROM is unique in its support of complex problems involving varying load and flow rate conditions.

Breakthrough Performance

Ansys Icepak solver and performance improvements enable 10 to 100X faster times for MCAD geometry loading, meshing, solver initialization and solving. New lightweight geometry handling improves model responsiveness and meshing speed.

Case Studies

Ansys and volabo GmbH

Toshiba improves product reliability and decreases development time through electromagnetic–thermal–stress coupling.

Read Case Study

Cutting the Cords

Simulation enables engineers to explore thermal management solutions in much less time than was possible in the past.

Read Case Study

Keeping the Block Cool

Toshiba improves product reliability and decreases development time through electromagnetic–thermal–stress coupling.

Read Case Study

Ruggedized System: Cool and Collected

Kontron uses sophisticated thermal simulation to balance size, weight, power and cooling (SWAP-C) trade-offs for “ruggedized” modular chassis that support customized solutions for mission-critical operations.

Read Case Study

Icepak Applications

View all Applications

PCBs, ICs and IC packages

Ansys’ complete PCB design solution enables you to simulates PCBs, ICs, and packages and accurately evaluate an entire system.

View Application

Electronics Reliability

Learn how Ansys integrated electronics reliability tools can help you solve your biggest thermal, electrical and mechanical reliability challenges.

View Application

Batteries

Ansys battery modeling and simulation solutions use multiphysics to help you maximize battery performance and safety while reducing cost and testing time.

View Application

Electric Motors

Ansys electric motor design software progresses from concept design to detailed electromagnetics, thermal and mechanical analysis of electric motors.

View Application

Predict airflow, temperature and heat transfer for electronics assemblies and printed circuit boards

With CAD-centric (mechanical and electrical CAD) and multiphysics user interfaces, Icepak facilitates the solving of today’s most challenging thermal management problems in electronics products and assemblies. Icepak uses sophisticated CAD healing, simplification and metal fraction algorithms that reduce simulation times, while providing highly accurate solutions that have been validated against real-world products. The solution’s high degree of accuracy results from the highly automated, advanced meshing and solver schemes, which ensure a true representation of the electronics application.

Key Features

Icepak includes all modes of heat transfer — conduction, convection and radiation — for steadystate and transient electronics cooling applications.

Electronics Desktop 3D layout GUI
DC joule heating analysis
Multiple-fluid analysis
Reduced order flow and thermal
Thermo-electric cooler modeling
Package characterization
Integrated graphical modeling environment

Electrothermal Analysis of a PCB

Heat can degrade the performance and reliability of electronic devices.

Power dissipation of ICs and power losses across the board are key inputs for thermal analysis.

Electronics Cooling

Ansys' industry leading computational fluid dynamics (CFD) solutions, along with chip-level thermal integrity simulation software, provide all you need to perform electronics cooling simulation and thermal analysis for chip-package, PCB and systems.

You can also conduct thermomechanical stress analysis and airflow analysis to select the ideal heat sink or fan solution. Our integrated workflow enables you to conduct design trade-offs, resulting in improved reliability and performance.

Thermal Reliability

Tight synergy with SIwave, Ansys Mechanical and Sherlock enables Icepak to accurately predict temperature rise using precise geometries and electrical inputs.

Icepak users can easily assemble automated workflows within the Ansys ecosystem to complete multiphysics analyses for electromigration, dielectric breakdown and multi-axial solder joint fatigue.

Work Smarter with Product Bundles

Thermal Analysis Product Pairings

Improve wireless communications, boost signal coverage and maintain connectivity for antenna systems, predict product performance and establish safe operating temperatures with these product pairings.

Electromagnetic Losses with Thermal Coupling For Temperature-Dependent Antenna Performance Assessment (Icepak & HFSS)
Ensuring the thermal stability of antenna-enabled 5G infrastructure, automotive radar, IoT devices and mobile electronic devices is critical in producing expected behavior. Power hungry activity such as video calls, online-based games or varying environmental conditions causes significant swings in device temperatures. If a phone’s battery becomes too hot, it can lose charge or even create safety issues. Also, high temperatures can affect other electronic components within a phone and impact RF antenna performance. Breakdown of a phone’s connectivity with mobile carriers, Bluetooth or Wi-Fi is traceable to thermal problems. You can predict these issues before you build the hardware by simulating your design using Ansys tools. For example, electrical engineers can dynamically link Ansys HFSS and Ansys Icepak in the Electronics Desktop to simulate the temperature of the antenna. Based on the electromagnetic and thermal coupling solutions, they can modify antenna design and predict antenna efficiency and the overall thermal and EM performance of the product. These EM and thermal simulations help to improve wireless communications, boost signal coverage and maintain connectivity for antenna-enabled systems.
Board-Level Electrothermal Coupling (Icepak and SIwave)
Even a marginal rise in temperature can affect the performance and reliability of electronic components, leading to system-wide problems. Board-level power integrity simulations within SIwave can be combined with Icepak thermal simulations to get a complete picture of a PCB’s electrothermal performance. SIwave and Icepak automatically exchange DC power and temperature data to calculate Joule heating losses within PCBs and packages to obtain highly accurate temperature field and resistive loss distributions. These DC electrothermal solutions let you manage the heat produced by your designs and predict thermal performance and safe operating temperatures of chips, packages and boards.