The development of PID temperature controllers based on FEM thermal analysis

Abstract

Nowadays, most of the electronic components that are deployed in industrial devices represent active heat sources that demand adequate cooling solutions to ensure their safe and reliable operation. Thermal design and the development of temperature controllers represent the two essential branches of the cooling system development process. Both workflows can be tackled with the support of Computer Aided Engineering software. In this regard, the parametric study of coolers based on Finite Element Method thermal analysis is widely discussed throughout the literature. Even so, the use of such simulation tools for further developing temperature controllers is only addressed from theoretical point of views. The present paper represents an approach for implementing PID controllers that are applicable to industrial electronic devices. Tuning of the gains is completed by using the Ziegler-Nichols heuristic method. The proposed approach replaces the physical system with simplified thermal modelling. The given concepts are verified by means of a simple experimental setup.