Finite Element Design of Water Heat Sinks for Press-Pack IGBTs

Abstract:
In the power electronics market the keywords for an evaluation of fluid heat sinks are “pressure drop” and “thermal resistance”. Nevertheless the devices that have to be cooled, especially the chips contained in the presspack IGBTs, require a uniform distribution of the surface temperatures in order to withstand a large number of thermal cycles. For this reason the commonplace concept of “thermal resistance” that does not take into consideration the non-uniformities cannot be satisfactory. In this work, because of its complexity, we don’t present any new project solutions nor any new prototypes. On the contrary our aim is to show the importance of a complete 3D modeling as a support in the modern designing of fluid heat sinks in order to produce really efficient products.