Application of Excel and thermal network method to thermal analysis of electronic equipment

In the field of scientific computing, Basic, C, and Fortran are widely used all over the world. Lots of beginners and students, however, suffer problems in making simulation programs due to inexperienced and complicated computer programming rules. Under such circumstances, some practical examples solved by using the spreadsheet software like Excel have been reported recently [1-3], where just by using equations written in each cell, calculations are performed without making any program. In the Excel analysis, writing and debugging are visually conducted by simply making use of worksheet analysis, and iterative calculations are carried out automatically until the prescribed convergence criterion is satisfied. Concerning calculated results, numerical values shown in the computational domain are immediately visualized using the chart wizard. Therefore, by using the spreadsheet software like Excel, even the students and younger researchers who have just started to study numerical analysis can perform calculations easily and quickly without studying any special knowledge about the computer language, and in addition without writing lengthy computer programs. In this study, for the purpose of introducing the abovementioned useful method to thermal analysis of electrical apparatus, electronic equipment and so on, the calculation process by thermal network method has been shown by using the concrete example of a compact fluorescent lamp.