What does more than 1 minute of simulation time allow you to do?
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With a Creator or Engineer subscription, DesignSpark Circuit Simulator allows your simulations to run longer than 1 minute and upto 1 hour of server compute time.
We list some key reasons why you may need an extended simulation time:
- Run electro-thermal transient simulations long enough for temperatures to reach steady-state, to verify reliability under real world operating conditions.
- Allows compute-intensive simulations, such as switching power electronic circuits, to run as long as necessary for line and load transient response tests.
- Monitor the behaviour of critical components to varying inputs over an extended time period, such as for vehicle drive-cycle simulations.
As an example, we have this current boost regulator using an Onsemi NCV4264 LDO (low-dropout regulator). In this electro-thermal simulation version of the design, the "junction to case" thermal resistance values from the datasheets for the NCV4264 LDO and the 2N5195G PNP power transistor that were used in a dynamic thermal network. This network represents the heat transfer, heat capacitance and thermal coupling effects of an example PCB. The values for the external thermal elements depend onthe specific board implementation. The user can change these and other parameters of the system, to better understand the sensitivity of the critical junction temperatures on these external mounting parameters, as well as the electrical operating conditions of the circuit.
Note: that when the electro-thermal aspect is added in the second design, it takes just over 2 minutes for the server to process and return the results. This is because the simulation is set to run for a much longer end-time (0.7 second vs. 0.1 second) in order to see the steady-state temperature values. With this knowledge at the prototyping stage, you can mitigate the risk of thermal failure by designing in protection measures.
You can find more details of this interactive reference design here: https://www.rs-online.com/designspark/current-boost-regulator-with-onsemi-ncv4264-ldo-electro-thermal-design