Simulation of thermal behaviour in hybrid circuits

A model is presented to investigate the hot-spot effect, occurring at the termination point of a trimming out in screen-printed resistors. The phenomenon is studied by means of a potential problem to calculate the electrical field in the resistor, for which a 2D thermal model, and a 3D thermal model have been built up. The steady-state behavior and the transient behavior are presented. Several examples show the usefulness of computer simulations to solve thermal problems especially in the case of the trimmed resistor.<
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