Thermal Management of Power Electronics - with Focus on Forced Convection and Two Phase Cooling Applications

Heat generation associated with joule heating causes an increase in temperature in electronic components. Damages caused by overheating are considered to be permanent and in the case of so high temperature, some parts even can be melted and such damages are always tried to be avoided. Heat sinks can be used as coolers in power electronics and as a result, they are commonly used in electronic systems. A heat sink, which consists of several micro-channels with the liquid flow, is a promising approach to cool power electronics with a high rate of heat generation due to the relatively high heat capacity and the efficiency of removing heat through liquid and two phase coolants.

Heat sinks will be studied through experiments and numerical simulation. The effects of channel inlet/outlet configuration, creation of cavities, change in flow direction, porous materials and two phase coolant will be studied numerically and experimentally on the cooling performance of heat sink for its reliable operation and increased electronic device lifespan. Also, optimized solutions for single-phase and two phase flow in microchannel heat sinks will be found.

Introducing an optimal heat-sink design in terms of thermal-performance and so, increasing the current heat dissipation limit of heatsinks, developing closed-form correlations for new proposed heat sink configurations and developing an easy to use tool to design high performance heat sinks are project’s objectives.

Funding: Department of Energy Technology, AAU.