Simcenter HEEDS
Automated Design Exploration Across the Full Thermal Workflow
Explore more design possibilities automatically and identify better trade-offs between thermal performance, weight, cost, and engineering constraints.
What It Is
HEEDS automates design-space exploration by connecting engineering tools, varying design parameters, executing simulations, and helping teams understand which designs and variables matter most.
Core Capabilities
Automated design exploration
- Connect with a broad range of design and simulation tools.
- Automate parameter variation and solver execution.
- Evaluate large numbers of design alternatives.
Multi-objective optimization
- Explore trade-offs among thermal performance, weight, cost, pressure loss, reliability, and other design objectives.
- Identify promising designs that may be missed through manual iteration.
- Evaluate constraints and competing requirements together.
Engineering insight
- Examine design sensitivities and performance trends.
- Identify the variables that have the strongest influence.
- Support decisions using simulation evidence.
Best For
- Electronics cooling optimization
- Heatsink and fan selection
- Enclosure layout optimization
- Cooling-loop design
- Thermal and mechanical trade-off studies
- Weight and cost reduction
- Multi-tool optimization workflows
- Robust-design exploration
Six-stage workflow position
Cross-stage optimization layer that connects tools and drives design decisions across the full workflow.
Why engineering teams choose HEEDS.
Representative engineering situations these tools are asked to resolve.
- 01
A heatsink and fan pairing hits its junction-temperature target but leaves the line-replaceable unit 220 g over its mass budget, and manual iteration has stalled after eleven attempts. HEEDS drives Flotherm through roughly 400 fin-geometry and base-thickness variants overnight and returns three designs that hold the same junction temperature at 35% less mass.
- 02
A cold-plate channel design has 12 free variables — channel count, width, depth, header taper, inlet position — and no closed-form optimum. HEEDS runs a SHERPA search across them and returns the pressure-drop versus junction-temperature trade-off surface in engineering hours, so the team selects from a Pareto front instead of defending one hand-tuned point.
- 03
A telecom rack must stay inside a 78 dBA acoustic limit and meet NEBS thermal derating at 40 °C inlet at the same time, and every fan-speed change trades one against the other. HEEDS treats both as objectives and finds the fan-curve and vent-area combination that satisfies both without an engineer iterating by hand for weeks.
- Consumes evidence to demonstrate ASHRAE TC 9.9, DO-160 or MIL-STD-810 targets are met under exploration
- Thermal engineer
- Mechanical engineer
- Systems engineer
How this reaches your team.
Delivered by Electro Source with tool-chain integration (Flotherm / FLOEFD / STAR-CCM+ / Flomaster / Amesim), study-design workshops, and SHERPA setup training. Contract design-exploration studies available via ROIfast™.
Discuss Your HEEDS Optimization Workflow
Tell us which tools you want to connect, which variables you want to explore, and what trade-offs you need to resolve.