Engineering will need to evolve to keep up with the demands of widespread electrification. Battery pack temperatures can swing performance by double-digit percentages under load. Power electronics degrade faster when heat isn’t evenly distributed. In compact electric systems, a few degrees can easily separate stable operation from failure.
These are just a few of the reasons that teams who work on electrified products are re-evaluating how they use thermal simulation software.
Electrification Is Everywhere
A boom in electrified systems is sweeping every industry. At the tail end of 2024, the US Department of Energy released research that showed demand for electricity had tripled over the prior decade, and was projected to double or triple again by 2028. Sweeping data center draw (in overdrive now with the birth of AI) was largely responsible — but data centers and their components are just one way electricity has taken over the manufacturing economy.
Electric vehicles are another example of recent mainstream tech that is upending how we think about and engineer complex systems. International Energy Agency research shows that electric vehicle adoption has scaled rapidly, with over 17 million EVs sold globally in 2024 (a figure that represents more than 20% of total car sales). As adoption continues to grow, expectations around reliability and efficiency will increase alongside it. Also per the IEA, EV battery demand is expected to reach more than 3 TWh in 2030.
Other large-scale battery-powered technologies will follow suit — just wait until electricity-powered Atlas androids are released into the world’s warehouses, factories, and homes.
Electrified Systems Operate Within Thermal Limits
Electrified designs, by their very nature, must concentrate energy into smaller spaces. Batteries, inverters, and control systems also generate heat continuously in use, often under variable loads and environmental conditions.
Research from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory shows that temperature variations across battery cells are a key driver of lithium-ion battery performance degradation rates and reductions in usable capacity. Engineers can reasonably expect that uneven thermal distribution will shorten lifespan and reduce performance before a system reaches its expected end of life. The thermal behavior of components in electrified systems will have an impact on:
- Battery lifespan and charge consistency
- Power electronics stability under load
- System efficiency across operating conditions
- Safety in high-energy environments
These constraints have to shape your design decisions early on. If you wait until after testing to collect nuanced thermal data, rework and redesigns are much more costly and time intensive than the sorts of pivots that can be made with detailed early thermal energy simulations.
Why Legacy Thermal Simulation Software Falls Short
It’s true that many engineering teams already use simulation tools for structural or mechanical analysis. Thermal modeling, however, has often been simplified or treated as a secondary step. Many organizations have an established simulation environments with structural analysis, CAD workflows, and design tools all in place. Thermal capabilities, though, may be missing or limited to legacy software with less detailed analysis.
Such an approach is problematic in electrified systems, because older or low-fidelity thermal models tend to assume steady-state conditions instead of transient behavior. There’s a risk that a streamlined thermal model oversimplifies material properties and thermal interfaces or misses localized hotspots in tightly packed assemblies. The last thing you want is for a decision-driving simulation to fail to capture interactions between components under a thermal load.
This is a common pain point in the shift from hydraulic or mechanical systems to electric designs. Previous processes may not have required detailed thermal analysis. Electrification has removed the margin of error. Teams would much rather avoid design changes or additional testing due to performance issues in late-stage product testing that were not visible earlier in development. Rather than replacing those existing systems, however, many teams have found ways to extend them by adding a powerful, proven thermal solver.
Thermal Simulation Has Slowly Moved Upstream
Thermal considerations may now influence decisions at the conceptual and preliminary design stages. There are significant risks to waiting until validation or testing, where options for changes are more limited.
Those early-stage engineering teams are making the most of thermal simulation software, which can be leveraged to:
- Evaluate cooling strategies earlier in development
- Compare design variations before committing to hardware
- Identify thermal constraints that affect system architecture
- Reduce reliance on physical prototyping
The integration of a robust thermal solver to the structural engineering software they already use allows engineers to continue working within familiar tools and processes, which increases confidence in design decisions and reduces rework later in the process.
Build or Buy: A Secondary Consideration With Real Impact
Some organizations have considered whether it makes sense to develop an internal thermal solver. Others have reached a decision point where they must choose whether to continue to support a legacy internal model.
In practice, either way, the internal path introduces long timelines and ongoing maintenance, not to mention the organization’s dependence on retaining specialized internal expertise.
The priority for most teams is not to build and support a solver, but to apply thermal analysis to practical engineering problems. If this is true for your team, there may be valuable speed, reliability, and improved resource allocation in the alternative: to integrate a premium thermal solver already trusted by thousands of organizations in industries ranging from transportation to consumer goods to aerospace and defense.
Support Electrification With TMG SDK
Engineering teams can extend their current engineering software platform’s capabilities with TMG SDK from Maya HTT. You don’t need to build and maintain a thermal solver to deliver consistent, high-fidelity results from thermal simulations. Integrate a plug-and-play thermal simulation software directly into your existing application. The benefits are immediate:
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Start Faster and Accelerate Development Cycles Get thermal modeling up and running quickly without building a solver from scratch. |
Extend Existing Tools (Don’t Replace Them) Add thermal capabilities into current engineering software and workflows. |
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Deliver Consistent, High-Fidelity Results Use validated methods and models to support reliable design decisions. |
Reduce Integration Effort and Engineering Overhead Avoid the ongoing cost of maintaining an in-house thermal solver. |
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Stay Focused on Product Performance Apply thermal insights directly to design challenges instead of managing infrastructure. |
Support Evolving Electrification Requirements Scale thermal capabilities as systems grow more complex and thermally sensitive. |
Electrification has dialed up the importance of thermal behavior insights. Design decisions that once relied on approximation now require accurate, detailed analysis. Integrate thermal simulation earlier in design to gain maximum flexibility and save on costs and time.
If your organization is expanding into electrified products, reach out to Maya HTT for information on the TMG SDK. We’re happy to show you how it works so you can evaluate whether it’s a good fit for your needs.
