Modeling of Moisture Transport Into an Electronic Enclosure Using the Resistor-Capacitor Approach

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to model moisture ingress into a closed electronic enclosure under isothermal and non-isothermal conditions. As a consequence, an in-house code for moisture transport is developed using the Resistor-Capacitor (RC) method, which is efficient as regards computation time and resources. First, an in-house code is developed to model moisture transport through the enclosure walls driven by diffusion, which is based on the Fick's first and second law. Thus, the model couples a lumped analysis of moisture transport into the box interior with a modified one-dimensional (1D) analogy of Fick's second law for diffusion in the walls. Thereafter, under non-isothermal conditions, the moisture RC circuit is coupled with the same configuration of thermal RC circuit. The paper concerns the study of the impact of imperfections in the enclosure for the whole diffusion process. Moreover, a study of the impact of wall thickness, different diffusion coefficient, and initial conditions in the wall for the moisture transport is accomplished. Comparison of modeling and experimental results showed that the RC model is very applicable for simple and rough enclosure design. Furthermore, the experimental and modeling results indicate that the imperfections, with certain limits, do not have a significant effect on the moisture transport. The modeling of moisture transport under non-isothermal conditions shows that the internal moisture oscillations follow ambient temperature changes albeit with a delay. Although, moisture ingress is slightly dependent on ambient moisture oscillations; however, it is not so dominant until equilibrium is reached.