This article is dedicated to the research of the physical reliability of electronic devices. It consists of a comparative thermal analysis of the cooling efficiency of a surface-mounted and an embedded component on a printed circuit board. A simulated finite element model of heat distribution over a printed circuit board with a surface component was constructed. An experiment confirmed the objectivity of the modeling results. The component’s temperature was then analyzed depending on the installation method (surface and embedded) and the cooling method (natural and forced with varying airflow velocities). The results showed that the temperature of the embedded component was less than the temperature of the surface-mounted component under natural convection and, in most cases, under forced convection (with an airflow velocity of forced cooling under 16 ms).
Keywords: PCB reliability; embedded components; finite element analysis; thermal analysis.