Application Of Differential Evolution Algorithm To Thermal Layout Optimization Of The Printed Circuit Board

Printed circuit boards are widely used in the electronic communications equipment, computers, household appliances, and so on. In recent decades, with the rapid development of electronic information technology, the size of electronic components has become smaller and smaller, electronic components more densely arranged which leads to limited areas and an increase in time for heat radiation. If the electronic equipment can’t be quickly cooled in time, circuit boards are prone to overheating, and even being invalidated or badly damaged. Therefore, accelerating the heat dissipation speed and improving the reliability of the equipment by thermal analysis and design are of great significance. In this paper, an improved differential evolution algorithm had been proposed to optimize board layout in electronic components. Thus, the purpose of reducing the temperature of the circuit board had been achieved.Firstly, mathematical model of electronic components on the printed circuit board had been established by using a micro-membered body heat balance method, which had also been used to analyze the heat transfer between nodes, especially internal nodes and border nodes, that could found the reasons and the solution of the temperature rise. Established heat balance equation of the board, then the steady-state temperature value of each node had been solved in MATLAB based on the hypothetically known parameters. In addition, a real circuit board had been used to solve its theoretical temperature and real temperature, showing that this method is accuracy.Secondly, the differential evolution algorithm had been generally used to solve the continuous problem, which had been binarized to solve the discrete problem. To make differential evolution algorithm converge faster, the differential evolution algorithm had been improved by changing mutation variability formulas and cross-rate. Then this improved differential evolution algorithm had been applied to the placement optimization of electronic components that are located regularly on the board, thus creating a new electronic component placement and solving the theoretical results.Evolution experiments demonstrate that the improved differential algorithm to optimize the layout of electronic components on the board effectively. After the new electronic component placement has been got, the ANSYS software has been used to simulate the temperature before and after the differential evolution algorithm was utilized. And the temperature of an original layout of board and an optimized board could be detected in an infrared thermal imager. Finally, the ANSYS simulation results and the results of the infrared thermal imager demonstrate that the improved differential evolution algorithm can optimize the electronic components on the circuit board, the proposed method is verified.