What is the numerical method used by Sauna?
Sauna is a thermal network program which uses the thermal/electric analogy. At the lowest level a Sauna thermal model is composed of nodes, thermal resistors and thermal capacitors. However, users rarely specify thermal resistances and capacitances. Instead, a user specifies a material type and plate or board dimensions. Sauna then creates the appropriate resistance/capacitance network based on Sauna’s library of material properties and the current modeling setup. For calculating steady state temperatures, Sauna uses a sparse, direct matrix solver which is based on Gaussian Elimination. Transient temperature calculation is based on either an implicit or explicit solver, depending on the model parameters and user settings. If you have further questions, feel free to contact Technical Support.
