Most likely, not of real interest to others… The objective here is to show the simplicity of doing an FEA on a PCB using FreeCAD and CalculiX plugin, without going into details.
This grew from curiosity about getting the traces into FreeCAD and doing a FEA on them and a previous post…
I was not interested in the PCB, having Thru-Holes, Footprints, , correct materials…etc. That stuff is easy to include and should be done for a Real analysis.
Thus, from Kicad, I Plotted DXF for Top Traces only.
In FreeCAD/Stepup wb, I used the ‘DXF to Sketch’ tool.
Extruded the result. Thus, resulting with padded traces. I used thickness of 0.01mm just to have a thin trace but thick enough for default Mesh parameters.
Added Fixed constraint.
Added Initial Temperature constraint (300˚K).
Added the second Temp (302˚K).
Constraint icons are hidden as their default size is too big for the small traces and I didn’t want to mess with changing them.
Because the default ∆T is 1sec and traces are very thin, they heat instantly. Thus, the Temperature Plot shows only final Temp.
Two Displays are shown: Temperature and Displacement
Again, a proper FEA would include PCB, correct Trace Thickness and material, constraints, footprints… etc. And, more importantly, a custom defined Equation for the Heating which, could include Current, Voltage, Resistance… whatever. Sure, I could have used different starting and final temps…
