Performance Evaluation of Thermal Management for a 3-Phase Interleaved DC-DC Boost Converter

Thermal management of power electronics in electrified vehicles is critical for ensuring robust functionality during a vehicle’s transient operation. For high-power converters, liquid cooling is often necessary to maintain the device’s junction below its critical temperature. Usually the manufacturer’s datasheet for liquid cold plates is used to create thermal models, but this method has some shortcomings. The data provided is generally measured at steady-state and assumes uniform heating on the surface; however, this scenario is not representative of the in-situ operation. To overcome these discrepancies, this paper introduces an experimental method designed to accurately measure the case temperature of individual devices on a cold plate. This allows for temporal temperature characterization of localized heating on the cold plate by power devices. Also, a thermal model is created to predict the MOSFET junction temperatures at various power dissipations based on the experimentally validated case temperatures.

[1]  Y. Fuh,et al.  Thermal management and performance evaluation of a dual bi-directional, soft-switched IGBT-based inverter for the 1st autonomous microgrid power system in Taiwan under various operating conditions , 2016 .

[2]  Hector Sarnago,et al.  Heat Management in Power Converters: From State of the Art to Future Ultrahigh Efficiency Systems , 2016, IEEE Transactions on Power Electronics.

[3]  Quanke Feng,et al.  Thermal performance study of integrated cold plate with power module , 2009 .

[4]  H. Pearlman,et al.  Experimental Investigation on the Thermal and Hydraulic Performance of Alumina–Water Nanofluids in Single-Phase Liquid-Cooled Cold Plates , 2015 .

[5]  Siaw Kiang Chou,et al.  Hotspot Mitigating With Obliquely Finned Microchannel Heat Sink—An Experimental Study , 2013, IEEE Transactions on Components, Packaging and Manufacturing Technology.

[6]  S. Devos,et al.  Experimental study of design parameter influence on thermal and hydraulic performance of cold plates , 2017, 2017 16th IEEE Intersociety Conference on Thermal and Thermomechanical Phenomena in Electronic Systems (ITherm).

[7]  Y. H. Hung,et al.  Heat Transfer and Flow Friction Characteristics for Compact Cold Plates , 2003 .

[8]  Y. Avenas,et al.  Numerical and Experimental Investigations of the Thermal Management of Power Electronics With Liquid Metal Mini-Channel Coolers , 2013, IEEE Transactions on Industry Applications.

[9]  K. Tseng,et al.  Weight consideration of liquid metal cooling technology for power electronics converter in future aircraft , 2016, 2016 IEEE 2nd Annual Southern Power Electronics Conference (SPEC).

[10]  D. Porschet,et al.  Thermal performance of water-cooled heat sinks: a comparison of two different designs , 2005, Semiconductor Thermal Measurement and Management IEEE Twenty First Annual IEEE Symposium, 2005..

[12]  D. Blackburn.  Temperature measurements of semiconductor devices - a review , 2004, Twentieth Annual IEEE Semiconductor Thermal Measurement and Management Symposium (IEEE Cat. No.04CH37545).

[13]  L. Dupont,et al.  Comparison of junction temperature evaluations in a power IGBT module using an IR camera and three thermo-sensitive electrical parameters , 2012, 2012 Twenty-Seventh Annual IEEE Applied Power Electronics Conference and Exposition (APEC).