Effective thermal management is critical for LED fixtures to maintain performance and extend lifespan. Heat generated during operation, if unmanaged, can degrade LED efficiency and reliability. Optimized cooling ensures safe temperatures, improves durability, and supports lighter, more sustainable designs. Generative design offers a groundbreaking approach to achieving these goals, balancing performance with cost and environmental benefits.
As LED chip costs have significantly decreased over the last decade, LED light manufacturers' focus has shifted to optimizing light fixtures instead, the primary cost driver in LED systems. The Brazilian thermal management bureau, Celera, successfully used ColdStream to generate a new heat sink design whose weight decreased by 27% without any significant increase in temperature, enabling their customers to save considerable manufacturing costs. The challenge lay in reducing fixture weight to lower material and manufacturing costs and environmental impacts while maintaining thermal performance and reliability. Given that traditional design methods are ill-suited for design generation due to their long cycle times, Celera decided to use generative design to quickly generate a high number of possible designs and test them.
Generative design’s core advantages included:
Using topology optimization, generative design redistributed material within the design space, testing and refining different solutions to achieve an optimal outcome, balancing weight reduction with thermal efficiency. The design process began with defining the design space, as engineers created an initial CAD model to establish the necessary geometry. Next, they incorporated material properties, heat loads, and ambient conditions into the platform to ensure an accurate representation of real-world behavior. This allowed the software to iterate through different design possibilities quickly and automatically, continuously evaluating and improving the designs until achieving the ideal balance between performance and material efficiency.
The original design showed a standard heat sink weighing 6.143 kg with a maximum junction temperature of 80°C. It was compared to two additional designs created by ColdStream based on two different approaches.
These results demonstrated that even a modest increase in junction temperature could unlock significant material savings, translating to cost and environmental benefits.
The use of generative design for thermal performance was a success, as it led to a significant weight reduction without any significant temperature increase, enabling a reduction in raw material use, environmental impact, and manufacturing and transport costs. This case study underscores the relevance of generative design in empowering manufacturers to strike a balance between performance and sustainability, fueling innovation in an industry increasingly focused on environmentally friendly solutions.
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Celera Thermal is a thermal management research company leveraging decades of collective expertise in R&D for advanced solutions tailored to various industries.
Their technical expertise and in-depth knowledge have earned them the trust of companies in the electronics, automotive, medical, aerospace, and lighting sectors, supporting their diverse applications with reliable solutions.
Their strategic focus is centered on understanding their clients' requirements, providing prompt responses, and delivering products that consistently surpass market quality standards.
These guiding principles shape not only their market strategy but also their organizational culture, enabling them to achieve widespread recognition and trust from a broad and expanding network of clients.