A rational formulation of thermal circuit models by finite element method and model reduction techniques for electro-thermal simulation

This paper presents a rational approach to construct thermal circuit networks equivalent to a discretization of the heat equation by the finite element method (FEM). After the derivation of FEM-based thermal circuit networks, model reduction techniques are further applied to derive reduced thermal circuit networks for the efficient electro-thermal simulation of power electronic circuits and devices in circuit simulators.<<ETX>>