APEI Builds First Multiphysics App with COMSOL’s Application Builder

Arkansas Power Electronics International (APEI), a manufacturer of high power density and high performance power electronics, has created a multiphysics simulation application with the all new COMSOL Application Builder.

APEI’s application examines fusing currents and ampacity of wire bonds. These bonds are small wires used to interconnect semiconductor devices with their packages.

A parametric sweep created by the user for a specific wire diameter, current, loop height, ambient temperature, bond length, and number of bonds shows the relationship between the number of bonds and the temperature in the interconnect.

One application function enables users to conduct a parametric sweep that shows how the number of wires affects peak wire temperatures. Before the application, engineers had to look at values in tables from multiple sweeps in Multiphysics. This application, the company states, helps simplify the process and generates more accurate, consolidated results.

Another tab in the application helps the user select the appropriate wire diameter, loop geometry, and number of wires to find the maximum current the bonds can carry without overheating.

“I’m building applications to help us expedite our design processes,” says Brice McPherson, a senior staff engineer at APEI. “Our engineers often spend time running analyses for the sales or manufacturing departments to find model results based on diverse conditions and requirements. The Application Builder will be hugely important for accelerating our work in this respect; any colleague outside of the engineering team will now be able to confidently run these studies by themselves, with no learning curve.”

The team at APEI expects to use the Application Builder for other projects, including applications for automating and streamlining the calculation of wire bond inductance, package thermal performance and layout analysis.

Learn more about currently available Application Builder-made applications in the video below by Senior Editor Kenneth Wong:

For more information, visit APEI and COMSOL.

Sources: Press materials received from the company and additional information gleaned from the company’s website.