Tough enclosures for electronics components

The Curtiss-Wright Controls Engineered Packaging group addresses a niche market by providing quick turn-around custom electronics enclosures to their customers. Typically, this involves low volume (quantities between 1 and 15 units), and production delivery in approximately 12-20 weeks. After the results of a preliminary thermal simulation using FloTHERM indicate that the customer requirements can be met, the mechanical design process begins. There are often several iterations back and forth between the design engineering and thermal engineering teams to reach a final solution. One design aspect that demands this level of attention is cooling fin design optimization. CFD simulation makes it quick and easy to optimize for pitch, thickness, number of fins, or base thickness.