An experimental and computational study of water cooled heatsinks for HEV's

Abstract

Power switching devices in dc/dc power converters for Hybrid Electric Vehicles (HEVs) are fluid cooled. Fluid cooled heatsinks make up nearly a third of the volume and weight of DC/DC converters. The design of heatsinks in automotive applications is therefore of paramount importance in order to gain high power-to-volume and high power-toweight ratios. Literature on heatsink designs often present test results that are based on one set of input data only (e.g. fluid inlet temperature, flow rate and fluid mixture). The fluid inlet temperature and flow rate, however, can vary substantially in an automotive fluid cooled system and the heatsink may therefore not perform well. Fluctuation of theses parameters must therefore be considered in the design of fluid cooled heatsinks in order to allow optimal cooling performance under all conditions. This paper describes the design of a heatsink that is optimised for one set of parameters. The heatsink is then tested at temperature and flow rate variations to emulate the fluctuation in a vehicle cooling system.

Electrical method to measure the transient thermal impedance of insulated gate bipolar transistor module

“…T peak and ΔT = T peak -T X increase as consequence of the decreased l at raised T X . It is harder for the heat to dissipate at higher T X , thereby increasing the heat accumulation within the module [24][25][26]. Since the heat accumulation is more severe at high temperature, the reliability and lifetime of IGBT module is much more easily impacted [4].…”

Design of passive heat sinks to power semiconductor with the cesaro curve

“…To reduce the heating of the devices inside, the use of heat sinks is proposed, for power semiconductors. These elements have the quality of absorbing the heat and in this way lead it to the outside, avoiding the possible damage of the circuit as of the elements that compose it [3][4][5].…”

“…Other application of heat sinks is in hybrid vehicles, arranged for fluid cooling, where the design is validated from analysis in the finite elements with variables such as the amount of fluid to cool and the speed of circulation [3]. In lighting devices [6], heat sinks with fins with "T" or "+" shapes are used [7], as well as inclined fins for natural convection [8].…”

“…Previous to do the production of the heat sinks, it is necessary to implement the finite elements analysis, in order to analyze the heat flow [3], or the mass flow analysis, to proceed to apply optimization methods to improve results regarding the thermal, physical and electrical characteristics [15,16]. As a clear example, it can be observed in the development of computers, where it is necessary to predict the behavior of the non-uniform heat inside the CPU (Central Processing Unit), to reduce the temperature in the plates of the CPU [17][18][19] and favor storage in magnetic mediums with energy assistance [20].…”