Simulation-driven design isn’t just for big metal structures anymore. Printed circuit boards (PCBs) are now carrying higher power densities, more delicate packages, and tighter allowable margins on reliability. As a result, thermal and dynamic (vibration/shock) substantiation of boards has become a first-class engineering task rather than an afterthought.
What Is PCB Thermal & Vibration Analysis?
PCB thermal analysis uses conduction/convection/radiation models to predict temperature fields across the board and components, identify hot spots, and quantify package/board thermal paths. The physics is dominated by through-thickness anisotropy (FR-4 vs copper), lateral spreading in planes, and vertical heat shunting through vias and component metallization. Industry thermal metrics and test setups are commonly framed using JEDEC JESD51-style thermal characterization parameters (e.g., θJA, θJB, ΨJB) to relate junction temperatures to board/ambient conditions.
PCB vibration analysis (often called board-level structural dynamics) predicts natural frequencies, mode shapes, stresses, and fatigue damage under sinusoidal, random vibration, and shock environments. These analyses are typically used to demonstrate compliance with environmental qualifications such as MIL-STD-810H Method 514.8 or IEC 60068-2-6, depending on the market.
In both domains, the “board” is really a coupled system: laminate stackup, copper architecture, solder joints, BGAs/QFNs, stiffeners, fasteners, potting/underfill, and any enclosure constraints.
Why Simulation Is Becoming More Important
Thermal Side
Power electronics, RF front-ends, and dense digital boards are pushing heat flux well beyond what old rule-of-thumb trace-area checks can handle. The PCB is often the dominant heat sink—JEDEC guidance and measurements routinely show that a large fraction of device heat exits through the board, making board thermal design a primary reliability driver.
At the same time, design standards explicitly treat thermal management and material/stackup choices as design-critical. That’s a strong signal from industry that “layout = thermal design.”
Simulation lets you:
- Resolve hot spots caused by local copper starvation, component clustering, or poor via stitching.
- Quantify the benefit of thermal vias and copper planes as vertical/lateral heat spreaders, instead of guessing. Thermal vias are specifically intended to pull heat from hot components into internal planes or heat sinks.
- Move from “will it pass?” to “how much margin do we have?” early enough to matter.
Vibration Side
Boards are increasingly deployed in harsh environments: EV inverters, avionics, space payloads, industrial robotics, rail, etc. High-cycle vibration drives:
- solder joint fatigue (especially at large BGAs and heavy components),
- pad cratering,
- connector fretting,
- trace cracking at stiff/soft transitions.
Modal parameters (frequencies, damping, mode shapes) are foundational because they dictate amplification under random vibration PSDs and sine sweeps. Knowing them early allows layout and support changes before qualification testing locks everything in.
How Fidelis Can Help
We’re seeing end-customers in electronics demand deeper, more defensible substantiation—especially for high-reliability hardware. Thermal compliance to JEDEC-style metrics, vibration qualification to MIL/IEC profiles, and clear traceability from requirements to results are no longer “nice to have.” They’re expected.
That’s where Fidelis steps in. We build high-fidelity PCB thermal and structural dynamics models using industry-leading SIMULIA tools, then align the analysis battery to your real mission environment—steady/transient power maps, enclosure heat paths, sine/random PSDs, and shock/SRS loading. We don’t just hand you plots; we deliver qualification-ready reports written the way your customer or cert authority wants to see them, with clear assumptions, boundary conditions and margins.
Many teams don’t have the in-house bandwidth, compute infrastructure, or specialized multiphysics experience to iterate on stackups, via strategies, stiffener schemes, or component placement and keep programs moving. We act as an extension of your engineering group—helping you go from “will this pass test?” to “how do we design this board to pass with margin and fewer spins?” That shift to simulation-driven design is where the biggest savings show up: reduced thermal rework, fewer vibration-induced failures in qual, and faster path to production.
Final Thoughts
PCB thermal and vibration failures are rarely “mysteries”—they’re usually consequences of oversights in the design that only show up at qualification or in the field. Modern FEA/CFD-coupled approaches let you capture those physics at design time, with traceable correlation to IPC/JEDEC methods for thermal and MIL/IEC environments for vibration.
The payoff is the same as in any other industry that has embraced simulation: fewer redesign loops, cleaner substantiation packages, and boards that survive both the heat they generate and the environments they live in. If you’d like to learn more about how Fidelis can help with your PCB design, don’t hesitate to get in touch!
