wholeboard.boxheat

Heat in an enclosure: how warm the air inside the box gets, and how hot its surfaces are to the touch.

The board's own heat map (web/simlab.js) is solved for the air around it. Put the board in a box and that air is warmer and barely moves. This is a lumped network of the box, good to a few degrees for small cases, with a node for the board, the inside air, and the inside and outside of the lid, the side walls and the base:

board → air weak natural convection, held back by the box board → walls radiation straight to the inside of each wall air → walls natural convection over each wall's inside surface through the walls conduction: a little for printed plastic, nothing for aluminium; heat also spreads round the box from one face to the next, which makes a metal box one temperature walls → room natural convection and radiation from each outside face; a base on a desk loses little air → room through the openings, by the chimney effect: warm air leaves by lid slots and holes, cooler air comes in low down (side vents, the gaps round the connectors). With openings at one height only, air swaps through them both ways, much more slowly.

The board sees a mix of the inside air and the walls, so solve gives the temperature that mix amounts to (board_env_c) and how strongly the board loses heat to it (board_h): the browser's plate solver and the circuit simulation use those in place of open air. geometry finds the box (the printed enclosure, the stock case, or the one WholeBoard would suggest) in board coordinates.

geometry(spec, geo, enc_spec, cfg=None)

The box around the board, in mm: x and y as on the board (from its top-left), z up from the board's top.

vent_slots(box, which)

The lid and side slots for a vent choice: the design's own, or the ones WholeBoard would cut.

solve(box, power_w, ambient_c, vents='design', material=None, placement='desk')

Board, inside air and surface temperatures with power_w of heat inside the box, in ambient_c air.