Abstract
Optimal heat dissipation in power modules can significantly increase their power density. Removing the generated heat is critical for capturing the benefits of advanced semiconductor materials and improving the reliability of the device operation. This study proposes a design optimization method for liquid-cooled heat sinks that use a Fourier analysis--based tool and an evolutionary optimization algorithm to optimize the heat sink geometry for specified objectives. The optimized heat sink geometry was compared with state-of-the-art solutions in the literature based on finite element analysis of different designs. The proposed methodology can develop complex geometries that outperform conventional heat sink geometries. Optimized heat sink design from the proposed method was fabricated and tested in an experimental setup under representative operating conditions. The experimental setup was also modeled in the finite element model that was used for the proposed heat sink optimization method. The experimental results show that developed finite element models can predict the thermal and flow performance of the complex design with high fidelity, and the results validate the proposed design approach.
Highlights
Transportation electrification necessitates improvements in system efficiency and power density
Aluminum was selected as the heat sink material, which is commonly used for power electronics thermal management [7], [12]
The pressure drop measurements confirm the accuracy of the finite element models developed to generate complex heat sink geometries, and show that even with the additional pressure drop across the manifold and cooling piping, high-performance heat sink designs with low pumping requirements are achievable
Summary
Transportation electrification necessitates improvements in system efficiency and power density. Achieving a high power density requires advanced power conversion modules that use the most efficient semiconductor devices, and optimal thermal management systems [1]–[3]. Part of this publication was presented at 2020 IEEE Energy Conversion Congress and Exposition (ECCE) in Detroit, Michigan, USA with the title, ”Fourier Analysis-Based Evolutionary MultiObjective Multiphysics Optimization of Liquid-Cooled Heat Sinks.” doi:10.1109/ECCE44975.2020.9235943. This manuscript has been authored by UT-Battelle, LLC, under contract DE-AC05-00OR22725 with the US Department of Energy (DOE). Population generation is critical for evolutionary algorithms to provide high quality results with reasonable computational resources.
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