At last year’s ANSYS Electronics Simulation Expo conference in Japan, my colleague Sandeep Sovani was delivering a keynote when he took out his Samsung smartphone and purposely dropped it on the stage! He was confidently making a point about designing robust electronic products.
The fact that a minor impact didn’t damage his phone’s exterior or degrade the performance of electronics, as best as we can tell, provides testimony that today’s engineers are paying close attention to product reliability and robustness.
Robust design is no accident. A lot of complex electronics circuitry is packed in the small space of a smartphone, generating a lot of heat. If you have seen the tear downs of phones, you know that the battery takes up significant space and that the circuit boards are loaded with components on both sides.
There isn’t much room for airflow to keep devices cool and it would be very easy for electronic components to break apart and short-circuit if not designed with structural integrity in mind. Heat can deform the circuit board too.
During my engineering career, I learned early on that engineers of all disciplines — electrical, systems, and industrial engineers, for example — must come together to ensure that the entire system will works as specified. Over the years, engineering simulation tools have become quite advanced, making virtual prototyping a reality and enabling closer team collaboration. With accurate simulation data in their hands, engineers can make smarter decisions, leading to better market outcomes.
As the High Tech industry gears up to ship nearly 2 billion smartphones annually by 2020, double the number shipped in 2013, we can thank the software engineers who design the simulation tools. To learn more about improving electronic product reliability, visit our website.
Watch this video to understand how engineering simulation is helping the design of robust electronics and making the smartphone revolution possible.
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