Thermal Model for Power Converters Based on Thermal Impedance

Abstract

In this paper, the superposition principle of a heat sink temperature rise is verified based on the mathematical model of a plate-fin heat sink with two mounted heat sources. According to this, the distributed coupling thermal impedance matrix for a heat sink with multiple devices is present, and the equations for calculating the device transient junction temperatures are given. Then methods to extract the heat sink thermal impedance matrix and to measure the Epoxy Molding Compound (EMC) surface temperature of the power Metal Oxide Semiconductor Field Effect Transistor (MOSFET) instead of the junction temperature or device case temperature are proposed. The new thermal impedance model for the power converters in Switched Reluctance Motor (SRM) drivers is implemented in MATLAB/Simulink. The obtained simulation results are validated with experimental results. Compared with the Finite Element Method (FEM) thermal model and the traditional thermal impedance model, the proposed thermal model can provide a high simulation speed with a high accuracy. Finally, the temperature rise distributions of a power converter with two control strategies, the maximum junction temperature rise, the transient temperature rise characteristics, and the thermal coupling effect are discussed.