Date on Master's Thesis/Doctoral Dissertation

5-2004

Document Type

Master's Thesis

Degree Name

M.S.

Department

Electrical and Computer Engineering

Committee Chair

Walsh, Kevin Michael, 1955-

Author's Keywords

Applied sciences

Subject

Thermodynamics--Computer programs

Abstract

This thesis is based on work done as part of a bigger project supported by Naval Research Laboratories (NRL). A MOSIS fabricated micro hotplate is simulated using the CAD software CoventorWare. There are three different sized hotplates in one die; viz. small, medium and large. The files designed in L-EDIT, are imported into CoventorWare which is used to build a 3-D model and perform various simulations on the models. A voltage sweep is applied to the hotplate terminals for different values of convection coefficients and the resulting temperature data is gathered. This data is compared with experimental data to obtain the best possible match. The main goal of this work is to obtain a suitable value of convection coefficients that provide a temperature solution which is as close as possible to the experimental data. Two sets of values for the convection coefficients are used, one from previous works and the other set is calculated, based on the hotplate dimensions. It is found that for the small and medium sizes, the error curves are close together for different values of the coefficients while for the large hotplate, the curves are apart. Hence convective heat loss decreases with size with conduction coming into prominence.

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