Abstract
Solid state hard drives are rapidly replacing spinning disk hard drives in the electronics industry, because of their reliability, and speed. Solid state hard drives primarily consist of NAND flash Memory, DRAM memory, capacitors, inductors, voltage regulators, and a controller. Solid state hard drives heat up significantly during their use, because of the large quantity of NAND memory devices. There is also a push for data centers to use ambient air, instead of controlled cool air, to reduce cost. Previous solid state drive designs did not require addressing the high power, high ambient temperature conditions, so the designs utilized simple box geometry, and no specific materials were used to help transfer heat. In order to speed up the development process, and save prototype development cost, finite element analysis simulation can be used. Different temperature, air flows, and materials, can be simulated with SolidWorks, to come up with the optimum design, before any parts are fabricated. The results of the design can then be compared against testing data, to verify the simulation. This paper will focus on thermal simulation of the design using SolidWorks, and comparison of the design against actual testing results.