The Reliability of Thermoelectric Coolers (II)

In the installation process, it’s necessary to avoid wrong installation, which makes influence to the TEC modules. There are the following points that may affect the reliability of the TEC modules during the installation:

a) TECs have high mechanical strength under pressure, but they have a small shear strength. Accordingly, TECs cannot be placed in a mechanical system that plays a main supporting role. Moreover, in the applications that may involves shocking and impact, it’s better to install the TECs under proper pressure, i.e. clamp them by screws. For peltier modules, they can cope with shocking or impact environment in airplane, military or similar environment by proper installation method.

b) Although the maximum suggested pressure for TECs is 15kg/cm2 (200 pounds/square inch), most of TECs can bear a pressure over 15kg/cm2 (200 pounds/square inch) and work well in the test. The most important is that the installation method is by using screws to fix the TECs and proper pressure has been kept during installation, which prevent TECs flexible and moving by a small lateral force. If there are multiple thermocouples in a TEC, moving parts will bring much trouble. Under this situation, if the pressure of the chucking is not enough during installation, then it may cause poor performance of TEC cooling or TEC failure ahead of time. When installing multiple stages TECs in array, it’s recommended to use TECs with a height tolerance of ±0.025 mm. Under any situations, make sure even pressure is added by the chucking and the surface shall be flat.

To be continued…

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