Meeting Challenges of Using COTS Component Thermal Data in Aerospace Application

This article is about the issues associated with the published thermal data from commercial off the shelf (COTS) component manufacturers. Some of the published electrical component thermal data can be confusing and/or misleading. This article discusses the possibility of wrong design decisions that can be made using published COTS thermal data. There are two major issues of the published thermal data associated with the use of COTS components. One is the published ambient temperature rating. Another is the published thermal resistance. This paper will discuss these two major issues in details and provide mitigation suggestions.