Douglas G. Brooks Co-Authors “Trace and Via Currents and Temperatures”

Estimated reading time: 1 minute

Douglas G. Brooks, PhD and Dr. Johannes Adam, CID have teamed up to write PCB Trace and Via Currents and Temperatures: The Complete Analysis. Brooks has been looking at trace current and temperature relationships since the mid-1990s. Now, he and Adam, of the consulting group Adam Research, have assembled decades of knowledge into these pages.

Starting with a historical background, this book covers: (a) PCB materials (copper and dielectrics) and the role they play in the heating and cooling of traces; (b) The IPC curves found in IPC 2152; (c) Equations that fit those curves; (d) Computer simulations that fit those curves and equations; (e) Sensitivity analyses showing what happens when we vary the environment (adjacent traces and planes, changing trace lengths, thermal gradients, etc.); (f) Via temperatures and what determines them; (g) Via current densities; (h) Fusing issues, what happens when traces are overloaded, and (i) Thermal gradients along traces, even at low temperatures.

Also provided are supplemental chapters or appendices about measuring the thermal conductivity of dielectrics and measuring the resistivity of copper traces (and why many prior attempts to do so have been doomed to failure.) And there is even a chapter on whether industrial CT scanning might replace microsections for measuring trace parameters. Never before has such a thorough compendium been available, especially so conveniently.

This book is available through Amazon.