Software Cradle Co., Ltd. (hereinafter Cradle) announces the release of a new version of the STREAM Computation Fluid Dynamics (CFD) Series, STREAM V8 and HEAT Designer V8.  STREAM V8 is general purpose structured (Cartesian or cylindrical) mesh thermal fluid analysis software.  HEAT Designer V8 is structured (Cartesian) mesh thermal fluid analysis software that is specifically designed for electronics cooling thermal analysis.

Since being introduced in 1984, STREAM has offered the usability and speed advantages of a structured mesh for a wide variety of commercial applications.  HEAT Designer is a derivative of STREAM and is designed for electronics cooling thermal analysis.  HEAT Designer is used for electronics design and development. 

This latest version of STREAM products is largely the result of customer requests for increased technical sophistication.  Some new features include:

·     Multiblock meshing:  A meshing method that enables locally increasing grid density where needed but retaining a coarse grid outside of these regions.  By locally applying finer mesh to portions of the computational domain, efficiency and convenience increase.  This is especially useful when simulating electronics cooling and/or building HVAC systems where the domain is large (necessitating a coarse grid) but details within the domain require a fine grid to properly resolve the physics.
 

·     Thermal simulation with wiring pattern:  STREAM V8 and HEAT Designer V8 can import Gerber format (RS-274D) data, which is the standard CAD format for Printed Circuit Board (PCB) design.  It enables an accurate representation of the PCB within the simulation.  The current version of STREAM and HEAT Designer can apply constant thermal conductance or anisotropic thermal conductance to consider different materials and/or the amount of wiring in PCB (which critically impacts the local thermal conductance). 
 

·     Spatial Temperature Distribution Analysis: Analysis of the spatial distribution of the Mean Radiant Temperature (MRT), Predicted Mean Vote (PMV) and Standard New Effective Temperature (SET*).  These are valuable techniques used when simulating indoor comfort levels.
 

·     Two resistor thermal circuit model:  The enormous complexity of modeling the intricate structure inside a semiconductor is replaced with a three node, two resistor model.  This model enables calculation of the semiconductor junction temperatures, which are the critical temperatures for determining the thermal conditions at the semiconductor.
 

·     Zooming Function:  The Zooming Function simplifies translation of initial and/or boundary conditions between models.  For example, if one analysis uses flow conditions from another analysis as boundary conditions, the zooming function links the field parameters from the first model to the second model. The zooming function works even when the size and details of the respective meshes are different.
 

·     CADaddin Tool:  CADaddinTool is a dll file for the SolidWorks Add-in.  By using the CADaddinTool, the user can set analysis conditions for STREAM within SolidWorks and launch the STREAM preprocessor.  HEATCADaddinTool performs similarly for HEATDesigner.