Thermal design guideline of PCB traces under DC and AC current

The demand on high power density tends to limit the area of printed circuit boards (PCB) and increase current density in PCB traces. A thermal design guideline which is able to reliably predict the current carrying capacity (CCC) of PCB traces will be valuable to PCB designers. This paper describes several design guidelines for trace CCC. They cannot be properly applied to today's PCB design characterized with high component density and high current density. The influence of effects, such as multilayers, corners and high frequency current undermines their use. These limitations are evidenced with experiments. Methods for developing a new design guideline which are practical for today's PCB design are introduced. Methods for temperature measurement and high frequency current generation are proposed as well.