Simulation of Heat Transfer on a Gas Sensor Component

Abstract: Gas sensors are today used in many different application areas, and one growing future market is battery operated sensors. As many gas sensor components are heated, one major limit of the operation time is caused by the power dissipated as heat. AppliedSensor is a company that develops and produces gas sensor components, modules and solutions, among which battery operated gas sensors are one targeted market. The aim of the diploma work has been to simulate the heat transfer on a hydrogen gas sensor component and its closest surroundings consisting of a carrier mounted on a printed circuit board. The component is heated in order to improve the performance of the gas sensing element. Power dissipation occurs by all three modes of heat transfer; conduction from the component through bond wires and carrier to the printed circuit board as well as convection and radiation from all the surfaces. It is of interest to AppliedSensor to understand which factors influence the heat transfer. This knowledge will be used to improve different aspects of the gas sensor, such as the power consumption. Modeling and simulation have been performed in FEMLAB, a tool for solving partial differential equations by the finite element method. The sensor system has been defined by the geometry and the material properties of the objects. The system of partial differential equations, consisting of the heat equation describing conduction and boundary conditions specifying convection and radiation, was solved and the solution was validated against experimental data. The convection increases with the increase of hydrogen concentration. A great effort was made to finding a model for the convection. Two different approaches were taken, the first based on known theory from the area and the second on experimental data. When the first method was compared to experiments, it turned out that the theory was insufficient to describe this small system involving hydrogen, which was an unexpected but interesting result. The second method matched the experiments well. For the continuation of the project at the company, a better model of the convection would be a great improvement.